封面:《社会科学:社会研究导论》第十八版,作者:David C. Colander 和 Elgin F. Hunt,由泰勒弗朗西斯集团旗下的劳特利奇出版社(伦敦、纽约)出版。劳特利奇出版社是泰勒弗朗西斯集团旗下的出版社,泰勒弗朗西斯集团是一家信息技术公司,劳特利奇出版社旗下的图书公司。

社会科学

Social Science

《社会科学:社会研究导论》现已出版第十八版,它以常识性视角而非社会科学教材中常见的形式主义视角进行研究。读者将看到看似不同的学科如何相互交织、相互联系——例如人类学和经济学。本书旨在培养学生批判性思维和解决问题的技能,使他们能够客观、明智地处理社会问题。

Now in its eighteenth edition, Social Science: An Introduction to the Study of Society approaches its study from a common sense perspective, rather than a formalistic perspective more common in social science texts. Readers will see how seemingly diverse disciplines intermingle and connect to one another—anthropology and economics, for example. The goal of the book is to teach students critical thinking and problem-solving skills that will allow them to approach social issues in an objective and informed way.

本版新增了以下重要更新:■ 关于民主局限性的辩论,以及正在发展中的中国政治替代方案。■ 新冠疫情的政治、经济和社会影响。■ 对唐纳德·特朗普总统任期的评估。■ 从特朗普总统任期到拜登总统任期的变化的政治、经济和社会影响。■ 美国政府数万亿美元预算赤字的影响。■ 世界各地民粹主义运动的兴起。■ 中国对美国的政治和经济挑战。■ 进化论的最新发展。■ 示例、数据、推荐阅读和互联网问题。■ 批判性思维问题。

New to this edition are significant updates on: ■ Debates about the limits of democracy, and the developing Chinese political alternative. ■ Political, economic, and social implications of the Covid pandemic. ■ Assessment of the Donald Trump presidency. ■ Political, economic, and social implications of the movement from the Trump presidency to the Biden presidency. ■ Implications of the multitrillion-dollar budget deficits the US government has been running. ■ The emergence of populist movements throughout the world. ■ The Chinese political and economic challenge to the United States. ■ Recent developments in evolution theory. ■ Examples, data, recommended readings, and Internet questions. ■ Critical thinking questions.

大卫·C·科兰德(David C. Colander)毕业于哥伦比亚大学,获经济学博士学位。1982年至2013年,他担任佛蒙特州米德尔伯里学院的克里斯蒂安·A·约翰逊杰出经济学教授。2013年,他被任命为米德尔伯里学院的杰出学院教授。2001年至2002年,他担任普林斯顿大学凯利杰出教学教授。他撰写、合著或编辑了40多本著作和200多篇文章,涉及广泛的主题。他的著作已被翻译成多种语言,包括中文、保加利亚语、波兰语、意大利语和西班牙语。他曾担任东方经济学会和经济思想史学会的会长,并担任多家期刊的编委,包括《经济展望杂志》《经济教育杂志》。

David C. Colander received his PhD from Columbia University and was the Christian A. Johnson Distinguished Professor of Economics at Middlebury College in Middlebury, Vermont, from 1982 until 2013, when he was appointed Distinguished College Professor at Middlebury. In 2001-2002, he was the Kelly Professor of Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University. He has authored, co-authored, or edited more than 40 books and 200 articles on a wide range of topics. His books have been translated into a number of different languages, including Chinese, Bulgarian, Polish, Italian, and Spanish. He has been president of both the Eastern Economic Association and History of Economic Thought Society and has been on the editorial boards of numerous journals, including the Journal of Economic Perspectives and the Journal of Economic Education.

埃尔金·F·亨特已故。他是本书于20世纪30年代初创时的早期作者之一,并于20世纪50年代成为唯一作者。他持续修订本书,直至20世纪70年代末由大卫·C·科兰德接手。

Elgin F. Hunt is deceased. He was one of the early authors of this book when it began in the 1930s, and took over as sole author in the 1950s. He continued revising the book until the late 1970s, when David C. Colander took over.

社会科学

Social Science

社会学导论

An Introduction to the Study of Society

第十八版

EIGHTEENTH EDITION

戴维·C· 科兰德· 埃尔金·F· 亨特

David C. Colander Elgin F. Hunt

徽标:由伦敦和纽约的 Routledge、Taylor and Francis Group 出版。Routledge 是 Taylor & Francis Group 的子公司,后者是一家信息业务

奉献

Dedication

致我的孙女阿德莱德和阿米莉亚:愿你们继承一个和平的世界。

To my granddaughters, Adelaide and Amelia: May you inherit a peaceful world.

内容

Contents

  1. 前言
  2. Preface
  3. 本版新增内容
  4. New to This Edition
  5. 致谢
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. 第一部分 简介
    1. 第一章 社会科学及其方法
      1. 社会科学
        1. 社会科学作为规则体系
        2. 科学方法及其应用
        3. 方法论与社会科学
      2. 社会科学方法
        1. 社会科学方法的一个例子
        2. 其他社会科学方法
        3. 社会科学中的受过教育的常识
        4. 统计数据的使用
        5. 跨学科方法
        6. 公正的旁观者与无知之幕
        7. 价值观、术语和修辞
      3. 结论
      4. 关键点
      5. 一些重要术语
      6. 复习和讨论的问题
      7. 进一步研究
      8. 附录:社会科学的历史根源
        1. 启蒙运动
        2. 从哲学到社会科学
        3. 一些重要术语
    2. 第二章 人类起源
      1. 《人类起源》
        1. 达尔文与进化论
        2. 遗传学的最新进展
        3. 进化论的修正
        4. 近期事态发展的一些启示
        5. 社会生物学
        6. 间断平衡与渐进变化
      2. 人类的进化
        1. 科学、信仰与争议
        2. 现代人类的祖先
        3. DNA证据与人类的起源
      3. 结论
      4. 关键点
      5. 一些重要术语
      6. 复习和讨论的问题
      7. 进一步研究
    3. 第三章 西方社会的起源
      1. 从石器时代到农业时代
      2. 早期文明
        1. 现代文明的摇篮:美索不达米亚和埃及
        2. 希腊文明的发展
        3. 波斯帝国
        4. 罗马文明
      3. 中世纪(公元476-1453年)
      4. 文艺复兴
      5. 现代经济和政治制度的发展
        1. 从农奴制到重商主义
        2. 民族国家的出现
        3. 1750 年代至 1850 年代的工业和政治革命
        4. 学习共同生活
      6. 结论
      7. 关键点
      8. 一些重要术语
      9. 复习和讨论的问题
      10. 进一步研究
  8. Part I Introduction
    1. Chapter 1 Social Science and Its Methods
      1. Social Science
        1. Social Science as a System of Rules
        2. The Scientific Method and Its Application
        3. Methodology and the Social Sciences
      2. The Methods of Social Science
        1. An Example of the Social Science Method
        2. Other Social Science Methods
        3. Educated Common Sense in the Social Sciences
        4. The Use of Statistics
        5. The Interdisciplinary Approach
        6. The Impartial Spectator and the Veil of Ignorance
        7. Values, Terminology, and Rhetoric
      3. Conclusion
      4. Key Points
      5. Some Important Terms
      6. Questions for Review and Discussion
      7. For Further Study
      8. Appendix: Historical Roots of Social Science
        1. The Enlightenment
        2. From Philosophy to Social Science
        3. Some Important Terms
    2. Chapter 2 Human Origins
      1. The Origin of the Human Species
        1. Darwin and the Theory of Evolution
        2. Recent Developments in Genetics
        3. A Revised Theory of Evolution
        4. Some Implications of Recent Developments
        5. Sociobiology
        6. Punctuated Equilibrium Versus Gradual Change
      2. The Evolution of Human Beings
        1. Science, Faith, and Controversy
        2. Predecessors of Modern Humans
        3. DNA Evidence and the Descent of Humans
      3. Conclusion
      4. Key Points
      5. Some Important Terms
      6. Questions for Review and Discussion
      7. For Further Study
    3. Chapter 3 Origins of Western Society
      1. From the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age
      2. Early Civilizations
        1. The Cradle of Modern Civilization: Mesopotamia and Egypt
        2. Development of Greek Civilization
        3. The Persian Empire
        4. Roman Civilization
      3. The Middle Ages (AD 476-1453)
      4. The Renaissance
      5. The Development of Modern Economic and Political Institutions
        1. From Serfdom to Mercantilism
        2. The Emergence of Nation-States
        3. The Industrial and Political Revolutions of the 1750s to the 1850s
        4. Learning to Live Together
      6. Conclusion
      7. Key Points
      8. Some Important Terms
      9. Questions for Review and Discussion
      10. For Further Study
  9. 第二部分 文化与个人
    1. 第四章社会、文化和文化变迁
      1. 文化与多元文化主义
        1. 多元文化主义
        2. 文化中的共同信仰
      2. 文化与社会本质
        1. 文化及其在人类社会中的作用
        2. 文化元素
      3. 文化融合
      4. 文化、社会和社会变革
        1. 流行的社会变革理论
        2. 导致文化变迁的因素
        3. 语言与文化变迁
        4. 稳定文化的因素
        5. 社会变革与社会稳定
      5. 社会变革与社会问题
        1. 文化滞后与社会问题
        2. 文化滞后理论的局限性
      6. 文化间的对比
        1. 人类与社会的互动
        2. 文化相对主义
        3. 社会研究方法
      7. 关键点
      8. 一些重要术语
      9. 复习和讨论的问题
      10. 进一步研究
    2. 第五章 地理、人口、生态和社会
      1. 地理
      2. 人口统计
        1. 人口估计
        2. 人口增长的决定因素
        3. 人口随时间的增长
        4. 计数问题
        5. 马尔萨斯理论
        6. 最优人口概念
        7. 人口质量问题
      3. 生态学:地理、人口和环境的相互作用
        1. 生态平衡
        2. 污染
        3. 保护和汽油及石油的价格
      4. 结论
      5. 关键点
      6. 一些重要术语
      7. 复习和讨论的问题
      8. 进一步研究
    3. 第六章 技术与社会
      1. 技术与社会变革
      2. 工业革命
        1. 美国工业主义的发展
        2. 标准化、互换性和大规模生产
        3. 互换性的社会和经济影响
      3. 技术进步的文化和社会基础
        1. 全球化的技术基础
      4. 重新审视技术与社会变革
        1. 技术、收入分配和就业
        2. 自然资源、经济和技术
        3. 自然资源、技术与气候变化
        4. 人类世
      5. 未来的技术和社会变革
        1. 信息革命
        2. 不要屏住呼吸,期待立即改变
      6. 结论:对未来的推测
      7. 关键点
      8. 一些重要术语
      9. 复习和讨论的问题
      10. 进一步研究
    4. 第七章 心理学、社会与文化
      1. 个人的社会化
        1. 童年早期的意义
        2. 个体环境差异的重要性
        3. 极度孤立对儿童的影响
        4. 人格及其发展
        5. 先天与后天之争
        6. 行为解释
        7. 适应良好的人
        8. 调整与常态
        9. 弗洛伊德的人格概念
        10. 流行心理学
      2. 智力、个人适应和正常性
        1. 心理测试
        2. 智力与个人适应
      3. 结论
      4. 关键点
      5. 一些重要术语
      6. 复习和讨论的问题
      7. 进一步研究
    5. 第 8 章 越轨、犯罪与社会
      1. 偏差与规范
        1. 冲突的规范和紧张局势
        2. 规范、犯罪和法治
        3. 当规范发生冲突时:冲出康普顿
      2. 关于偏差的主要理论
        1. 偏差的心理学和生物学解释
        2. 遗传和生物学上的偏差倾向
        3. 社会生物学与偏差
        4. 偏差的社会学解释
        5. 偏差的经济解释
        6. 关于偏差的各种观点的总结
      3. 犯罪、法律与秩序
        1. 问题一:美国是否试图对个人施加过多的控制?
        2. 问题二:在美国,正义是否平等地适用于所有人?
        3. 问题三:确定司法和刑事制度的目的
      4. 结论
      5. 关键点
      6. 一些重要术语
      7. 复习和讨论的问题
      8. 进一步研究
  10. Part II Culture and the Individual
    1. Chapter 4 Society, Culture, and Cultural Change
      1. Culture and Multiculturalism
        1. Multiculturalism
        2. The Shared Beliefs in Culture
      2. Culture and the Nature of Society
        1. Culture and Its Role in Human Societies
        2. The Elements of Culture
      3. Cultural Integration
      4. Culture, Society, and Social Change
        1. Popular Theories of Social Change
        2. Factors Causing Cultural Change
        3. Language and Cultural Change
        4. Factors Stabilizing Culture
        5. Social Change Versus Social Stability
      5. Social Change and Social Problems
        1. Cultural Lag and Social Problems
        2. Limitations of the Cultural Lag Theory
      6. Contrasts Among Cultures
        1. The Interaction of Humans and Society
        2. Cultural Relativism
        3. Approach to the Study of Society
      7. Key Points
      8. Some Important Terms
      9. Questions for Review and Discussion
      10. For Further Study
    2. Chapter 5 Geography, Demography, Ecology, and Society
      1. Geography
      2. Demography
        1. Population Estimates
        2. Determinants of Population Growth
        3. The Growth of Population Over Time
        4. The Problem of Counting
        5. The Malthusian Theory
        6. The Concept of Optimal Population
        7. The Question of Population Quality
      3. Ecology: The Interaction of Geography, Demography, and Environment
        1. The Ecological Balance
        2. Pollution
        3. Conservation and the Price of Gasoline and Oil
      4. Conclusion
      5. Key Points
      6. Some Important Terms
      7. Questions for Review and Discussion
      8. For Further Study
    3. Chapter 6 Technology and Society
      1. Technology and Social Change
      2. The Industrial Revolution
        1. The Development of Industrialism in the United States
        2. Standardization, Interchangeability, and Mass Production
        3. Social and Economic Effects of Interchangeability
      3. The Cultural and Social Basis for Technological Progress
        1. The Technological Foundation of Globalization
      4. Technology and Social Change Revisited
        1. Technology, Income Distribution, and Jobs
        2. Natural Resources, Economics, and Technology
        3. Natural Resources, Technology, and Climate Change
        4. The Anthropocene Age
      5. Technology and Social Change in the Future
        1. The Information Revolution
        2. Don't Hold Your Breath Expecting Immediate Change
      6. Conclusion: Speculating About the Future
      7. Key Points
      8. Some Important Terms
      9. Questions for Review and Discussion
      10. For Further Study
    4. Chapter 7 Psychology, Society, and Culture
      1. Socialization of the Individual
        1. Significance of the Early Years of Childhood
        2. Significance of Differences in Individual Environment
        3. Effects of Extreme Isolation on Children
        4. Personality and Its Development
        5. The Nature/Nurture Debate
        6. Explanations of Behavior
        7. The Well-Adjusted Individual
        8. Adjustment and Normality
        9. The Freudian Concept of Personality
        10. Pop Psychologies
      2. Intelligence, Personal Adjustment, and Normality
        1. Mental Tests
        2. Intelligence and Personal Adjustment
      3. Conclusion
      4. Key Points
      5. Some Important Terms
      6. Questions for Review and Discussion
      7. For Further Study
    5. Chapter 8 Deviance, Crime, and Society
      1. Deviance and Norms
        1. Conflicting Norms and Tension
        2. Norms, Crime, and the Rule of Law
        3. When Norms Conflict: Straight Outta Compton
      2. Major Theories on Deviance
        1. Psychological and Biological Explanations of Deviance
        2. Genetic and Biological Predisposition to Deviance
        3. Sociobiology and Deviance
        4. Sociological Explanations of Deviance
        5. Economic Explanations of Deviance
        6. Summary of Various Perspectives on Deviance
      3. Crime, Law, and Order
        1. Problem 1: Is the United States Trying to Exert Too Much Control Over Individuals?
        2. Problem 2: Is Justice Applied Equally to All in the United States?
        3. Problem 3: Deciding the Purpose of the Justice and Criminal System
      4. Conclusion
      5. Key Points
      6. Some Important Terms
      7. Questions for Review and Discussion
      8. For Further Study
  11. 第三部分 制度与社会
    1. 第九章 家庭
      1. 家庭模式的变化
        1. 配偶数量
        2. 配偶的选择
        3. 家庭控制
        4. 单亲家庭
        5. 血统计算
      2. 家庭在社会中的作用
      3. 家庭模式与家庭功能的匹配
        1. 配合数量和稳定性
        2. 配偶的选择
      4. 西方家庭的其他特征和家庭功能
      5. 当今美国的家庭
        1. 婚介和约会
        2. 性与单身
        3. 孩子们
        4. 长者
        5. 家庭解体与离婚
        6. 单打
        7. 共同生活
        8. 家庭的未来
      6. 关键点
      7. 一些重要术语
      8. 复习和讨论的问题
      9. 进一步研究
    2. 第十章 宗教
      1. 宗教的本质
      2. 当今的伟大宗教
        1. 印度教
        2. 佛教
        3. 犹太教
        4. 基督教
        5. 伊斯兰教
      3. 宗教在社会中的作用
        1. 宗教是道德价值观和社会变革的源泉
        2. 宗教对教育、艺术和文学的影响
        3. 不同信仰间的和平努力
        4. 宗教与政府之间的潜在冲突
      4. 关键点
      5. 一些重要术语
      6. 复习和讨论的问题
      7. 进一步研究
    3. 第十一章 教育
      1. 学校作为社会控制机构
        1. 美国教育的双重压力
        2. 教育与美国民主
      2. 美国教育的发展
        1. 美国学校系统的民主结构
        2. 学校体系正规化
      3. 审视学校系统
        1. 技术变革与教学
        2. 私立学校和家庭学校
        3. 特许学校、私有化和学校财政问题
        4. 教科书
        5. 辍学者
        6. 多元文化主义、合作学习和制度公平
        7. 美国学校有多好?
        8. 追求卓越
        9. 大学课程的变化
        10. 美国教育体系平等吗?
        11. 普通公民应该接受多少教育?
      4. 经济、政治和社会制度的相互作用
      5. 关键点
      6. 一些重要术语
      7. 复习和讨论的问题
      8. 进一步研究
    4. 第十二章社会和经济分层
      1. 社会分层的类型
        1. 庄园
        2. 种姓
        3. 社会阶层
      2. 社会流动性
        1. 谁是向上流动的人?
        2. 教育与社会流动
        3. 美国的阶级意识
        4. 阶级意识、马克思和韦伯
      3. 经济和社会不平等
        1. 收入不平等的原因
        2. 无就业复苏与全球化
        3. 贫困测量
      4. 社会和经济不平等加剧
        1. 减少不平等的政策
        2. 关于美国阶级制度的一些结论
      5. 关键点
      6. 一些重要术语
      7. 复习和讨论的问题
      8. 进一步研究
    5. 第十三章 阶层分化、少数群体与歧视
      1. 种族和民族
        1. 民族和种族优越性问题
        2. 种族偏见和歧视
        3. 大熔炉
      2. 少数民族
        1. 美洲原住民
        2. 系统性种族主义和微歧视
        3. 西班牙裔
        4. 亚裔
        5. 阿拉伯裔美国人和中东裔美国人
        6. 移民与少数民族
        7. 宗教少数派
        8. 女性
        9. 长者
        10. 身体残疾歧视
      3. 结论
      4. 关键点
      5. 一些重要术语
      6. 复习和讨论的问题
      7. 进一步研究
  12. Part III Institutions and Society
    1. Chapter 9 The Family
      1. Variations in the Family Pattern
        1. Number of Mates
        2. Selection of Mates
        3. Family Control
        4. Single-Parent Families
        5. Reckoning of Descent
      2. Functions of the Family in Society
      3. Matching Family Patterns With Family Functions
        1. Number and Stability of Mates
        2. Selection of Mates
      4. Other Western Family Characteristics and Functions of the Family
      5. The Family in the United States Today
        1. Matchmaking and Dating
        2. Sex and Singles
        3. Children
        4. Senior Citizens
        5. Family Disorganization and Divorce
        6. Singles
        7. Living Together
        8. The Future of the Family
      6. Key Points
      7. Some Important Terms
      8. Questions for Review and Discussion
      9. For Further Study
    2. Chapter 10 Religion
      1. The Nature of Religion
      2. The Great Religions of Today
        1. Hinduism
        2. Buddhism
        3. Judaism
        4. Christianity
        5. Islam
      3. The Role of Religion in Society
        1. Religion as a Source of Moral Values and Social Change
        2. Impact of Religion on Education, the Arts, and Literature
        3. Interfaith Efforts for Peace
        4. The Potential Conflict Between Religion and Government
      4. Key Points
      5. Some Important Terms
      6. Questions for Review and Discussion
      7. For Further Study
    3. Chapter 11 Education
      1. Schools as Agencies of Social Control
        1. The Dual Thrust of US Education
        2. Education and US Democracy
      2. The Development of US Education
        1. Democratic Structure of the US School System
        2. Formalization of the School System
      3. Examining the School System
        1. Technological Change and Teaching
        2. Private Schools and Home Schooling
        3. Charter Schools, Privatization, and the Problem of School Finance
        4. Textbooks
        5. School Dropouts
        6. Multiculturalism, Collaborative Learning, and Institutional Fairness
        7. How Good Are US Schools?
        8. The Search for Excellence
        9. Changes in the College Curriculum
        10. Is the US Educational System Equal?
        11. How Much Education Should the Average Citizen Receive?
      4. Interaction of Economics, Politics, and Social Institutions
      5. Key Points
      6. Some Important Terms
      7. Questions for Review and Discussion
      8. For Further Study
    4. Chapter 12 Social and Economic Stratification
      1. Types of Social Stratification
        1. Estates
        2. Castes
        3. Social Classes
      2. Social Mobility
        1. Who Are the Upwardly Mobile?
        2. Education and Social Mobility
        3. Class Consciousness in the United States
        4. Class Consciousness, Marx, and Weber
      3. Economic and Social Inequality
        1. Causes of Income Inequality
        2. Jobless Recovery and Globalization
        3. Measuring Poverty
      4. Increasing Social and Economic Inequality
        1. Policies to Reduce Inequality
        2. Some Conclusions About the US Class System
      5. Key Points
      6. Some Important Terms
      7. Questions for Review and Discussion
      8. For Further Study
    5. Chapter 13 Stratification, Minorities, and Discrimination
      1. Race and Ethnicity
        1. Questions of Ethnic and Racial Superiority
        2. Ethnic and Racial Prejudice and Discrimination
        3. The Melting Pot
      2. Minorities
        1. Native Americans
        2. Systemic Racism and Microaggressions
        3. Hispanics
        4. Asian Descent
        5. Arab Americans and Americans of Middle Eastern Descent
        6. Immigration and Minorities
        7. Religious Minorities
        8. Women
        9. Senior Citizens
        10. Physical Disabilities Discrimination
      3. Conclusion
      4. Key Points
      5. Some Important Terms
      6. Questions for Review and Discussion
      7. For Further Study
  13. 第四部分 政治与社会
    1. 第十四章 政府的职能和形式
      1. 政府的主要职能
        1. 维护内部秩序和外部安全
        2. 确保正义
        3. 保障个人自由
        4. 规范企业和个人的行为
        5. 促进普遍福利
      2. 关于政府性质的辩论
        1. 政治理论与政府
        2. 关于政府性质的三种观点
        3. 每种观点的真理要素
      3. 政府形式
        1. 民主国家
        2. 专制
      4. 政府远非简单
      5. 关键点
      6. 一些重要术语
      7. 复习和讨论的问题
      8. 进一步研究
    2. 第十五章 世界各国政府
      1. 法国政府
        1. 法国议会制度
        2. 法国行政部门
      2. 中国政府
        1. 中国政府史
        2. 中国的国家结构
      3. 尼日利亚政府
        1. 英国的影响
        2. 现代尼日利亚政府:第四共和国
        3. 尼日利亚面临的困难
        4. 最后评论
      4. 俄罗斯政府
      5. 沙特阿拉伯政府
      6. 关于政府的一些教训
      7. 未来政府的变动
      8. 关键点
      9. 一些重要术语
      10. 复习和讨论的问题
      11. 进一步研究
    3. 第十六章 美国的民主政府
      1. 美国政府的历史发展
      2. 美国政府结构
        1. 国民政府结构
        2. 我们国家政府的性质
      3. 政治进程
        1. 政党
        2. 选举
        3. 第四等级
        4. 政治精英
        5. 军工联合体和压力集团
      4. 民主政治进程评估
      5. 关键点
      6. 一些重要术语
      7. 复习和讨论的问题
      8. 进一步研究
  14. Part IV Politics and Society
    1. Chapter 14 The Functions and Forms of Government
      1. The Primary Functions of Government
        1. Maintaining Internal Order and External Security
        2. Ensuring Justice
        3. Safeguarding Individual Freedoms
        4. Regulating Business's and Individuals’ Actions
        5. Promoting the General Welfare
      2. Debates About the Nature of Government
        1. Political Theory and Government
        2. Three Views of the Nature of Government
        3. Elements of Truth in Each of the Views
      3. Forms of Government
        1. Democracies
        2. Autocracy
      4. Governments Are Far From Simple
      5. Key Points
      6. Some Important Terms
      7. Questions for Review and Discussion
      8. For Further Study
    2. Chapter 15 Governments of the World
      1. French Government
        1. The French Parliamentary System
        2. The French Executive Branch
      2. Chinese Government
        1. Chinese Governmental History
        2. Chinese State Structure
      3. Nigerian Government
        1. British Influence
        2. Modern Nigeria's Government: The Fourth Republic
        3. Difficulties Facing Nigeria
        4. A Final Comment
      4. Russian Government
      5. Saudi Arabian Government
      6. Some Lessons About Governments
      7. Future Changes in Governments
      8. Key Points
      9. Some Important Terms
      10. Questions for Review and Discussion
      11. For Further Study
    3. Chapter 16 Democratic Government in the United States
      1. Historical Development of US Government
      2. The Structure of US Government
        1. Structure of the National Government
        2. The Nature of Our National Government
      3. The Political Process
        1. Political Parties
        2. Elections
        3. The Fourth Estate
        4. The Political Elite
        5. The Military-Industrial Complex and Pressure Groups
      4. Evaluation of the Democratic Political Process
      5. Key Points
      6. Some Important Terms
      7. Questions for Review and Discussion
      8. For Further Study
  15. 第五部分 经济与社会
    1. 第十七章 经济活动的组织
      1. 经济的本质
        1. 经济功能
        2. 经济学和社会科学
        3. 经济需求和经济商品
        4. 另一个经济问题
      2. 经济体系的演变
        1. 从封建主义到重商主义
        2. 从重商主义到务实的市场经济
      3. 计划经济和非计划经济
        1. 计划经济应该如何运作
        2. 为什么中央计划没有实现其目标
        3. 市场经济应该如何运作
        4. 供需
      4. 现代经济是务实的市场经济
      5. 结论
      6. 关键点
      7. 一些重要术语
      8. 复习和讨论的问题
      9. 进一步研究
    2. 第十八章 美国面临的经济、政府和经济挑战
      1. 政府在经济中的间接作用
        1. 经济监管问题
        2. 政府体现谁的愿望?
        3. 对监管的态度摇摆不定
      2. 政府在经济中的直接作用
        1. 政府的钱花在哪里
        2. 政府资金来源
        3. 务实市场经济中的替代供应方法
      3. 政府的一些有争议的角色
        1. 通过政府进行收入再分配
        2. 政府的宏观经济作用
        3. 稳定经济
        4. 货币和财政政策
      4. 美国未来面临的经济挑战
        1. 债务挑战
        2. 全球化挑战
        3. 收入不平等的挑战
        4. 气候变化挑战
      5. 结论
      6. 关键点
      7. 一些重要术语
      8. 复习和讨论的问题
      9. 进一步研究
  16. Part V Economics and Society
    1. Chapter 17 The Organization of Economic Activities
      1. The Nature of an Economy
        1. Functions of an Economy
        2. Economics and the Social Sciences
        3. Economic Wants and Economic Goods
        4. The Other Economic Problem
      2. The Evolution of Economic Systems
        1. From Feudalism to Mercantilism
        2. From Mercantilism to a Pragmatic Market Economy
      3. Planned and Unplanned Economies
        1. How Planned Economies Are Supposed to Work
        2. Why Central Planning Did Not Meet Its Goals
        3. How Market Economies Are Supposed to Work
        4. Supply and Demand
      4. Modern Economies Are Pragmatic Market Economies
      5. Conclusion
      6. Key Points
      7. Some Important Terms
      8. Questions for Review and Discussion
      9. For Further Study
    2. Chapter 18 The Economy, Government, and Economic Challenges Facing the United States
      1. Government's Indirect Role in the Economy
        1. The Problem of Regulating the Economy
        2. Whose Desires Does the Government Reflect?
        3. Fluctuating Attitudes Toward Regulation
      2. Government's Direct Role in the Economy
        1. Where the Government Spends Its Money
        2. Where Government Gets Its Money
        3. Alternative Methods of Supply in a Pragmatic Market Economy
      3. Some Controversial Roles of the Government
        1. Income Redistribution Through Government
        2. Government's Macroeconomic Role
        3. Stabilizing the Economy
        4. Monetary and Fiscal Policy
      4. Economic Challenges Facing the United States in the Future
        1. The Debt Challenge
        2. The Globalization Challenge
        3. The Income Inequality Challenge
        4. The Climate Change Challenge
      5. Conclusion
      6. Key Points
      7. Some Important Terms
      8. Questions for Review and Discussion
      9. For Further Study
  17. 第六部分 全球问题
    1. 第十九章 国际政治关系
      1. 国际关系中的国家
      2. 民族国家
        1. 民族国家的建立与消亡
      3. 欧盟的崛起
      4. 国家主权
      5. 世界社会的力量
        1. 国家权力的性质和来源
        2. 美国霸权的终结与中国军事力量的崛起
        3. 其他能源
      6. 维护安全
      7. 外交政策
        1. 地理与外交政策
        2. 价值观、意识形态和外交政策
      8. 美国与国际社会
        1. 总统与外交政策
        2. 美国外交政策
      9. 关键点
      10. 一些重要术语
      11. 复习和讨论的问题
      12. 进一步研究
    2. 第二十章 国际经济关系
      1. 国际贸易有何不同?
        1. 外汇市场
        2. 固定与浮动汇率制度
      2. 国际收支和贸易差额
      3. 国际贸易的优点和缺点
        1. 贸易的三大优势
        2. 贸易的弊端
        3. 为什么经济学家普遍支持自由贸易
        4. 为什么你不能只获得优势而不承担劣势
      4. 国际贸易限制
        1. 进口关税
        2. 进口配额
        3. 取消贸易限制
        4. 全球化
      5. 全球化、贸易失衡和汇率
      6. 结论
      7. 关键点
      8. 一些重要术语
      9. 复习和讨论的问题
      10. 进一步研究
    3. 第21章发展中国家的政治经济学
      1. 发展中国家的问题
        1. 政治共识问题
        2. 腐败问题
        3. 经济问题
        4. 债务问题
        5. 人口问题
        6. 人才流失问题
        7. 不可能的任务:给潜在领导者的建议
      2. 发展中国家的选择
        1. 政治选择
        2. 经济选择
        3. 外交政策选择
        4. 人口选项
        5. 人才流失选项
        6. 谁将成为下一任领导人?
      3. 案例研究
        1. 中国
        2. 委内瑞拉
        3. 乌干达
      4. 结论
      5. 关键点
      6. 一些重要术语
      7. 复习和讨论的问题
      8. 进一步研究
    4. 第二十二章 国际机构与寻求和平
      1. 战争问题
        1. 战争的原因
        2. 解决战争问题的方法
      2. 联合国
        1. 联合国值得吗?
        2. 联合国在维持和平中的作用
        3. 联合国的其他做法
      3. 和平前景
        1. 世界麻烦地区
      4. 结论
      5. 关键点
      6. 一些重要术语
      7. 复习和讨论的问题
      8. 进一步研究
  18. Part VI Global Issues
    1. Chapter 19 International Political Relations
      1. The State in International Relations
      2. The Nation-State
        1. The Establishment and Disappearance of Nation-States
      3. The Rise of the European Union
      4. Sovereignty of States
      5. Power in the World Community
        1. The Nature and Sources of National Power
        2. The End of US Hegemony and the Rise of Chinese Military Power
        3. Other Sources of Power
      6. Maintaining Security
      7. Foreign Policies
        1. Geography and Foreign Policy
        2. Values, Ideologies, and Foreign Policy
      8. The United States in the World Community
        1. The President and Foreign Policy
        2. US Foreign Policies
      9. Key Point
      10. Some Important Terms
      11. Questions for Review and Discussion
      12. For Further Study
    2. Chapter 20 International Economic Relations
      1. What Makes International Trade Different?
        1. Foreign Exchange Markets
        2. Fixed and Flexible Exchange Rate Systems
      2. Balance of Payments and Balance of Trade
      3. Advantages and Disadvantages of International Trade
        1. Three Advantages of Trade
        2. Disadvantages of Trade
        3. Why Economists Generally Support Free Trade
        4. Why You Can't Get the Advantages Without the Disadvantages
      4. Restrictions on International Trade
        1. Tariffs on Imports
        2. Import Quotas
        3. Removing Trade Restrictions
        4. Globalization
      5. Globalization, Trade Imbalances, and Exchange Rates
      6. Conclusion
      7. Key Points
      8. Some Important Terms
      9. Questions for Review and Discussion
      10. For Further Study
    3. Chapter 21 The Political Economies of Developing Countries
      1. Problems of Developing Countries
        1. The Political Consensus Problem
        2. The Corruption Problem
        3. The Economic Problem
        4. The Debt Problem
        5. The Population Problem
        6. The Brain Drain Problem
        7. Mission Impossible: Advice to a Potential Leader
      2. Options of Developing Countries
        1. Political Options
        2. Economic Options
        3. Foreign Policy Options
        4. Population Options
        5. The Brain Drain Option
        6. Who Will Be the Next Leader?
      3. Case Studies
        1. China
        2. Venezuela
        3. Uganda
      4. Conclusion
      5. Key Points
      6. Some Important Terms
      7. Questions for Review and Discussion
      8. For Further Study
    4. Chapter 22 International Institutions and the Search for Peace
      1. The Problem of War
        1. The Causes of War
        2. Approaches to the Problem of War
      2. The United Nations
        1. Is the UN Worth It?
        2. The UN's Role in Keeping the Peace
        3. Other UN Approaches
      3. The Outlook for Peace
        1. Trouble Spots of the World
      4. Conclusion
      5. Key Points
      6. Some Important Terms
      7. Questions for Review and Discussion
      8. For Further Study
  19. 指数
  20. Index

前言

Preface

社会科学的教学方式多种多样。有些课程采用全球视角,有些采用人类学视角,有些采用心理学视角,有些采用社会学视角,有些则采用历史视角——仅举几例。在我看来,尽管每种社会科学视角都有其可取之处,但社会科学课程的独特之处在于它从尽可能多的不同视角审视问题,并依靠学者基于受过教育的常识来选择对特定问题最有效的视角。基于受过教育的常识视角才是社会科学的视角。

Social science is taught in diverse ways. Some courses take a global perspective, some an anthropological perspective, some a psychological perspective, some a sociological perspective, and some a historical perspective—to name just a few. In my view, although each individual social science perspective has something to offer, what distinguishes the social science course is that it looks at problems from as many different perspectives as possible, relying on the scholar’s educated common sense to choose the perspective that is most useful for a particular problem. The educated common sense perspective is the social science perspective.

社会科学课程的目标是向学生传达这种经过深思熟虑的常识性观点。这并非易事;正如伏尔泰曾经说过的,常识并不那么常见。1他句话的意思是,从一个角度看是常识的东西,从另一个角度看可能相当愚蠢。我们所追求的常识是一种经过深思熟虑的常识——一种面临来自其他视角的激烈竞争的常识。通过思想的竞争,“常”识会变成越来越细致入微的常识。最终,在足够多的竞争下,常识会变成经过深思熟虑的常识。经过深思熟虑的常识包括理解任何常识观点中的细微差别,并认识到常识的局限性。

The goal of a social science course is to convey this educated common sense perspective to students. That’s not an easy task; as Voltaire once said, common sense is not so common.1 What he meant by this is that what seems like common sense from one perspective, can seem quite stupid from another. The common sense that we are striving for is an educated common sense—a common sense that has faced vigorous competition from other perspectives. Through the competition of ideas, “common” sense becomes a more and more nuanced common sense. Eventually, with enough competition, common sense becomes educated common sense. Educated common sense involves understanding the nuance in any common sense view, and a recognition of the limits of common sense.

受过教育的常识是学生需要学习的重要概念。在早期版本的末尾,我附上了一张表格,让学生给本书评分并向我提出改进建议。许多学生都这样做了,他们的建议对本书的形成发挥了重要作用。我很高兴地说,大多数学生都给予了高度评价,但也有一些学生对本书和课程提出了批评。一位特别令人难忘的学生几乎每章都给我打了不及格,他写道:

Educated common sense is an important concept for students to learn. At the end of an earlier edition, I included a sheet for students to grade the book and to send me suggestions for improvement. A number of students did this, and their suggestions have played an important role in shaping the book. Most, I’m happy to say, were highly positive, but a few attacked the book and the course. One particularly memorable student flunked me on just about every chapter and wrote the following:

那个学生显然读过这本书,因为他是对的:这本书并没有告诉学生什么是对什么是错,它确实报告了猜测、假设和可能。但那个学生对于什么适合、什么不适合大学教育的看法是错误的。猜测、假设和可能正是大学教育的内容,因为到学生上大学时,他们应该成熟到能够理解知识不过是合理的猜测、合理的假设和合乎逻辑的可能。社会科学不会告诉你什么是正确的。它尽可能公正地呈现观察结果和理论,并提供指导和训练,帮助你筛选这些内容并做出自己的决定。

That student obviously read the book, because he is correct: The book doesn’t tell the student what is right or wrong, and it does report guesses, hypotheses, and maybes. But that student is wrong about what does and what doesn’t belong in college. Guesses, hypotheses, and maybes are precisely what belong in college, because by the time students are in college they can be expected to have the maturity to understand that knowledge is nothing but good guesses, reasonable hypotheses, and logical maybes. Social science doesn’t tell you what’s right. It presents the observations and the theories as fairly as it can and provides you with guidance and training to sift through them and make your own decisions.

受过教育的常识视角将细微差别与事实和真理融合,形成一个万花筒般的世界观,使人能够从多个角度看待世界,即使认识到自身的缺点和局限性,也能对自己和自己的想法感到满意。本课程的目标是让学生敞开心扉,接受他人的见解,同时也对自己通过生活和反思所形成的洞见和感性感到满意。这种技能通常被称为批判性思维,但我更倾向于称之为受过教育的常识,因为批判性思维常常与学者的视角联系在一起,而没有充分考虑到所有人通过生活所获得的深厚知识和感性。“常识”一词最初的本意正是捕捉这种知识和感性。受过教育的常识修正而非取代普通常识。它尊重心智知识,但并不将其奉为圭臬。

The educated common sense perspective blends nuance with facts and truths into a kaleidoscope vision of the world that allows one to see it from multiple perspectives, and to be comfortable with oneself and one’s ideas even as one recognizes one’s faults and limitations. The goal of the course is to make students open to others’ insights but also comfortable with their own insights and sensibilities that they have developed through living and reflection. The skill is often called critical thought, but I prefer to call it educated common sense because critical thought too often is associated with scholars’ perspectives, and does not take adequate account of the deep knowledge and sensibility that all people discover by just living. It was that knowledge and sensibility that the original common sense term was meant to capture. Educated common sense modifies, but does not replace, common common sense. It respects knowledge of the mind, but does not make a fetish of it.

在我看来,大学教授的常识性常识太少了。我们的教育体系常常在学生还没有形成整体概念——甚至还没知道自己未来要去哪里——就匆匆忙忙地让他们进入专业领域。一旦学生有了整体概念,专业化就必不可少,但让他们先进入专业领域,对学生来说并不公平。过早进入专业领域的学生无法培养常识性视角;他们对学科之间的相互关系和共鸣缺乏敏感。最糟糕的情况是,他们会成为本学科方法的奴隶。最好的情况是,他们有智慧认识到解决问题的方法有很多,但缺乏训练迫使他们重复做事。如果学生掌握其他学科的知识,他们就能省去很多麻烦,效率也会更高。

In my view, colleges teach too little educated common sense. All too often our educational system rushes students into specializations before students have an overall picture—before they know where they want to go. Once they have an overall picture, specialization is necessary, but to make them specialize before having an overall picture is unfair to students. Students who specialize too early don’t develop a common sense perspective; they aren’t sensitive to the interrelationships and resonances among disciplines. At worst, they become slaves of their discipline’s approach. At best, they have the wisdom to recognize that there are many approaches to a problem, but their lack of training forces them to recreate the wheel. Knowledge of the other disciplines would have saved them the trouble and been far more efficient.

正因如此,我大力倡导社会科学课程,并一直敦促各大学将各个社会科学系合并为一个综合系,该系将比目前更加注重各社会科学学科之间的相互关系。综合社会科学课程是学生在大学学习的最重要的课程之一,在我看来,它是学习特定社会科学学科课程的先决条件。它能让人们更好地理解其他学科。

That is why I am a strong advocate of the social science course and have been urging colleges to merge their various social science departments into one composite department that focuses more on the interrelationships among the various social sciences than is currently done. The general social science course is one of the most important courses students take in college and, in my view, it is a prerequisite to taking courses in specific social science disciplines. It puts those other disciplines in perspective.

本版新增内容

New to This Edition

本书的上一版出版于 2019 年,这意味着它反映了 2018 年社会科学的状况;这一版出版于 2022 年,这意味着它反映了 2021 年社会科学的状况。在这三年中,发生了许多变化。从政治上讲,在美国,2018 年唐纳德·特朗普担任总统,他正在挑战许多支配政治的政治习俗。2021 年,约瑟夫·拜登担任总统,他采取了更为传统的政策方针。他说他想成为一位团结的总统,但由于民主党和共和党都有大量群体不愿妥协,并呼吁消除双方的温和中间派,这很难实现。

The last edition of this book was published in 2019, which meant that it reflected the state of social science in 2018; this edition is published in 2022, which means that it reflects the state of social science in 2021. In those three years much has changed. Politically, in the United States, in 2018 Donald Trump was president, and was challenging many of the political mores that governed politics. In 2021, Joseph Biden was president, and was taking a much more traditional approach to policy. He said he wanted to be a unity president, but that was difficult with large groups of both the Democratic and Republican parties unwilling to compromise and calling for elimination of the moderate middle on both sides.

特朗普任职期间曾两次遭到弹劾,但两次都因党派偏见而被宣告无罪。一些特朗普的支持者(在特朗普的鼓励下)称乔·拜登的选举存在舞弊行为,导致一群特朗普的支持者冲进国会大厅进行暴力抗议。几乎所有中立的观察员都认为拜登合法赢得了选举,权力和平移交。但如果选举结果更加接近,并且存在关于谁获胜的辩论,则不清楚会发生什么。双方会接受结果吗?我不清楚结果会是什么。因此,可以公平地说,在国内,我们的政府体制受到了挑战。在我最常去的美国东部学术机构中,人们对唐纳德·特朗普并不太感冒。任何事情出错,很明显特朗普都会受到指责。如果事情进展顺利,那也是尽管他成功,而不是因为他成功。对特朗普的本能反应让我无法与许多朋友进行我认为合理的政治讨论,我们通过限制对某些政治领域的讨论来解决这个问题。但即使对那些反对特朗普的人来说,他也发挥了有益的作用——他们可以把所有错误都归咎于他。所以,我把这次新版归咎于他。

While in office Trump was impeached twice, but was acquitted both times along highly partisan lines. Some Trump supporters (with Trump’s encouragement) called Joe Biden’s election rigged, leading a group of Trump supporters to break into the halls of Congress in violent protest. Almost all neutral observers believed that Biden won the election legally, and there was a peaceful transfer of power. But it is unclear what would have happened had the election results been much closer and subject to debate about who won. Would either side have accepted the result? It is unclear to me what the result would have been. So, it is fair to say that, domestically, our system of government was challenged. In the eastern US academic establishments where I hang out for the most part, Donald Trump is not considered with much fondness. Anything went wrong, and it was pretty clear that Trump would be blamed. And if things went right, it would be in spite of him, rather than because of him. That visceral reaction to Trump made it impossible to have what I considered a reasonable discussion of politics with many of my friends, and we resolved the problem by limiting our discussions of certain areas of politics. But even for those opposed to Trump, he served a useful role—they could blame whatever went wrong on him. And so, I blame this new edition on him.

为什么能怪到他头上?他如此影响着关于政治和美国外交政策的讨论,以至于特朗普上任前的讨论已经过时了。特朗普改变了美国政治的面貌,也改变了美国文化中的辩论。他的任期使经济(贸易政策和医疗保健)、政治(党派之争、政党认同和党内分歧)、文化(移民问题,如DACA)和外交政策(美国优先、主权和全球化)等领域的问题凸显出来,需要修改所有以经济学和政治学为重点的章节。约瑟夫·拜登在2020年大选中击败他意味着事情将恢复正常,但这将是后特朗普时代的新常态,而不是前特朗普时代的常态。我试图在这一版中传达的就是这种新常态。为了强调特朗普在其政治遗产中持续的重要性,我在第一章的介绍中描述了人们对特朗普 2016 年胜利的反应,以捕捉对特朗普的不同看法,并强调美国民主正受到严峻挑战,存在着截然相反的观点需要承认和解决。

Why can it be blamed on him? He so influenced the discussion about politics and US foreign policy that the pre-Trump discussion was no longer up to date. Trump changed the face of US politics and changed the debate in US culture. His term in office brought to the fore issues in economics (trade policy and health care), politics (partisanship, identity of parties, and the divisions within parties), culture (issues of migration and immigration such as DACA), and foreign policy (America First, sovereignty, and globalization) that required revision of all economics and political science focused chapters. Joseph Biden’s win over him in the 2020 election meant that things would be moving back to normal, but it would be a new post-Trump normal, not the pre-Trump normal. It is that new normal that I try to convey in this edition. To emphasize Trump’s continuing importance through his legacy, I left the Chapter 1 introduction describing reactions to Trump’s 2016 victory to capture the differing views on Trump and to emphasize that US democracy is being severely challenged, and that there are diametrically opposed perspectives that need to be acknowledged and addressed.

美国民主不仅在国内面临挑战,在国际上也面临挑战。中国声称,它提供了一种“指导性民主”的替代方案,即共产党统治一个有限的民主政府。随着中国作为经济和军事强国的不断发展,这种不同于西方民主的中国式民主方案可能会变得越来越重要。这种实力不仅正在改变人们对政治意识形态的评估,也正在改变权力平衡和外交政策的性质。美国不再是霸主,适应新的现实是一项艰巨的任务,这正在给世界带来严重的紧张局势。本书第18版试图捕捉这些变化。

It isn’t only domestically that US democracy is being challenged. Internationally, democracy is being challenged as well. China argued that it offered a “guided Democracy” alternative in which the Communist Party rules over a limited democratic government. This Chinese alternative to Western democracy will likely become more and more important as China continues to grow as an economic and military power. That power is changing not only the assessment of political ideologies but also the balance of power and nature of foreign policy. The United States is no longer a hegemon, and adjusting to the new reality is a difficult task that is creating serious tensions in the world. This 18th edition attempts to capture those changes.

在政治之外,世界经历了重大挑战。自上一期以来,新冠病毒疫情极大地影响了世界各国的政治和经济状况,这使得各国应对疫情的替代方式成为对比替代政治体制成本和收益的良好途径。这也带来了一些变化在经济章节中,美国政府和世界各国政府为应对疫情而出现了数万亿美元的巨额赤字,并将疫情视为“百年一遇的危​​机”,以此为这些赤字辩护。鉴于世界面临的危机类型——核毁灭的可能性、前所未有的气候变化以及现有政治惯例的崩溃——尚不清楚疫情是否是我们在未来十年将经历的唯一“百年一遇的事件”。我还做了许多修改,以反映特定领域的新学术成果。示例、数据、推荐阅读和互联网问题都已更新。鼓励学生更深入地探索这些想法。我还在每一章中增加了复习和讨论的问题。

Outside of politics the world has experienced significant challenges. Since the last edition, the coronavirus pandemic has greatly influenced both the politics and the economic condition of world societies, making the alternative ways countries have dealt with it a good way of contrasting the costs and benefits of alternative political systems. That also brought about changes in the economic chapters, as the US government and governments around the world dealt with the pandemic by running large multitrillion-dollar deficits, justifying those deficits by seeing the pandemic as a “one in a hundred year crisis.” Given the types of crises the world faces—the potential of nuclear annihilation, unprecedented climate change, and breakdowns of existing political conventions—it isn’t clear that the pandemic is the only “one hundred year event” that we will experience this decade. I have also made numerous changes to reflect new scholarship in specific areas. Examples, data, recommended readings, and Internet questions were all updated. To encourage students to explore the ideas more deeply. I also added Questions for Review and Discussion to every chapter.

尽管发生了这些变化,但这本书仍然和上一版一样——相对中立(至少是我所能做到的中立),希望是有教养的、常识性的概述和介绍社会科学以及对我们这个时代的主要问题进行社会科学思考的介绍。

Despite all these changes, the book remains what it was in the previous edition—a relatively neutral (at least as neutral as I am able to be), hopefully educated, common sense overview and introduction to the social sciences and social science thinking about the major issues of our day.

致谢

Acknowledgments

一如既往,本书受益于各位审稿人、同事和学生给我发来的电子邮件中的建议。我谨向他们所有人表示感谢。

As always, the book benefits from the suggestions of reviewers, colleagues, and students who have emailed me. I’d like to thank them all.

在过去的几版中,审阅者包括:Paul Demetriou(哈弗林学院);Edgar Bravo(迈阿密戴德学院肯德尔校区);Victor J. Ingurgio(俄克拉荷马大学诺曼分校);Tabitha N. Otieno(杰克逊州立大学);Alex Gancedo 和 Harold Silva(迈阿密戴德学院);Caroline Lewis(威尔士三一圣大卫大学);Ruth McGrath(提赛德大学);John Kilburn(德克萨斯 A&M 国际大学);Heather Griffiths(费耶特维尔州立大学);Charles Matzke(密歇根州立大学);Ted Williams III(肯尼迪-金学院,芝加哥城市学院);William Plants(里奥格兰德大学);David S. Schjott(西北佛罗里达州立学院);Emmanuel Agbolosoo(纳瓦霍社区学院);Ali Al-Taie(肖大学);Verl Beebe(代托纳比奇社区学院);John Beineke(肯尼索州立学院);Thomas J. Bellows(德克萨斯大学圣安东尼奥分校);达拉斯 A. 布兰查德 (Dallas A. Blanchard),西佛罗里达大学;杜卡梅尔·博卡奇 (Ducarmel Bocage),霍华德大学;威廉 K. 卡勒姆 (William K. Callam),代托纳比奇社区学院;帕姆·克拉布特里 (Pam ​​Crabtree),纽约大学;布鲁斯·唐兰 (Bruce Donlan),布里瓦德社区学院;安东尼·道格拉斯 (Anthony Douglas),洛南 (Lornan),密西西比州立大学;威廉 M. 唐斯 (William M. Downs),佐治亚州立大学;菲尔 A. 德里梅尔 (Phil A. Drimmel),代托纳比奇社区学院;J. 罗斯·埃什尔曼 (J. Ross Eshleman),韦恩州立大学;达纳·芬顿 (Dana Fenton),纽约市立大学曼哈顿区社区学院;西里尔·弗朗西斯 (Cyril Francis),迈阿密戴德学院北校区;理查德·弗莱 (Richard Frye),温彻斯特纪念医院神经诊断实验室 (Winchester Memorial Hospital),弗吉尼亚州温彻斯特;维琪·加斯金-巴特勒 (Vikki Gaskin-Butler),南佛罗里达大学圣彼得堡分校;朱迪·金特里 (Judy Gentry),哥伦布州立社区学院;保罗·乔治 (Paul George),迈阿密戴德学院;唐·格里芬 (Don Griffin),俄克拉荷马大学;希瑟·格里菲斯 (Heather Griffiths),费耶特维尔州立大学;查尔斯 F. 格鲁伯 (Charles F. Gruber),马歇尔大学; Ghulam M. Haniff,圣克劳德州立大学(明尼苏达州);Roberto Hernandez,迈阿密戴德新世界中心;Charles E. Hurst,伍斯特学院;Sharon B. Johnson,迈阿密戴德学院;Kenneth CW Kammeyer,马里兰大学;Rona J. Karasik,圣克劳德州立大学;Lynnel Kiely,杜鲁门学院;HD Kirkland,湖城社区学院;Patricia E. Kixmiller,迈阿密戴德学院;DR Klee,密苏里州堪萨斯城;Casimir Kotowski,哈里 S. 杜鲁门城市学院;Errol Magidson,理查德 J. 戴利社区学院;James T. Markley,费尔法克斯勋爵社区学院;Stephen McDougal,威斯康星大学拉克罗斯分校;David J. Meyer,锡达维尔大学;Karen Mitchell,密苏里大学;Catherine Montsinger,约翰逊 C. 史密斯大学;Lynn Mulkey,霍夫斯特拉大学;Roy Mumme,南佛罗里达大学;埃莉诺·J·迈亚特 (Eleanor J. Myatt),棕榈滩初级学院;昆汀·纽豪斯 (Quentin Newhouse Jr.),霍华德大学;厄尔·纽曼 (Earl Newman),亨利·福特社区学院;安妮特·帕尔默 (Annette Palmer),霍华德大学;罗宾·佩林 (Robin Perrin),佩珀代因大学;约瑟夫·皮尔金顿-达德尔 (Joseph Pilkington-Duddle),佛罗里达州高地海滩;威廉·普里默斯 (William Primus),迈阿密戴德学院北校区;罗杰·罗利森 (Roger Rolison),棕榈滩社区学院;威廉·H·罗斯伯格 (William H. Rosberg),柯克伍德社区学院;俄克拉荷马州立大学丹·塞拉科维奇;波士顿大学亨利·肖克利;阿洛伊修斯山学院朱莉·史密斯;迈阿密戴德学院露丝·史密斯;纽约市立大学梅德加·埃弗斯学院沙琳·斯诺登;迈阿密戴德学院罗纳德·斯塔布斯;雷丁区社区学院拉里·R·斯塔基;里奥格兰德大学巴里·汤普森;里奥格兰德大学朱迪·汤普森;迈阿密戴德学院伊丽莎白·特伦塔内利;玛丽蒙特大学玛格丽特·曾;东北大学爱德华·乌利亚西;刘易斯·克拉克州立学院安吉拉·沃特尔;格伦代尔社区学院大卫·威尔斯;芝加哥城市学院泰德·威廉姆斯;湖城社区学院 WM·赖特;堪萨斯大学诺曼·R·耶特曼;迈阿密戴德学院北校区乔治·兹古里德斯·普里默斯以及其他希望保持匿名的人士。

Over the last few editions the reviewers have included Paul Demetriou, Havering College; Edgar Bravo, Miami Dade College Kendall Campus; Victor J. Ingurgio, University of Oklahoma, Norman; Tabitha N. Otieno, Jackson State University; Alex Gancedo and Harold Silva, Miami Dade College; Caroline Lewis, University of Wales Trinity Saint David; Ruth McGrath, Teesside University; John Kilburn, Texas A&M International University; Heather Griffiths, Fayetteville State University; Charles Matzke, Michigan State University; Ted Williams III, Kennedy-King College, City Colleges of Chicago; William Plants, University of Rio Grande; David S. Schjott, Northwest Florida State College; Emmanuel Agbolosoo, Navajo Community College; Ali Al-Taie, Shaw University; Verl Beebe, Daytona Beach Community College; John Beineke, Kennesaw State College; Thomas J. Bellows, The University of Texas at San Antonio; Dallas A. Blanchard, University of West Florida; Ducarmel Bocage, Howard University; William K. Callam, Daytona Beach Community College; Pam Crabtree, New York University; Bruce Donlan, Brevard Community College; Anthony Douglas, Lornan, Mississippi; William M. Downs, Georgia State University; Phil A, Drimmel, Daytona Beach Community College; J. Ross Eshleman, Wayne State University; Dana Fenton, City University of New York, Borough of Manhattan Community College; Cyril Francis, Miami Dade College North Campus; Richard Frye, Neuro-Diagnostic Lab, Winchester Memorial Hospital, Winchester, Virginia; Vikki Gaskin-Butler, University of South Florida St. Petersburg; Judy Gentry, Columbus State Community College; Paul George, Miami Dade College; Don Griffin, University of Oklahoma; Heather Griffiths, Fayetteville State University; Charles F. Gruber, Marshall University; Ghulam M. Haniff, St. Cloud State University (Minnesota); Roberto Hernandez, Miami Dade New World Center; Charles E. Hurst, The College of Wooster; Sharon B. Johnson, Miami Dade College; Kenneth C. W. Kammeyer, University of Maryland; Rona J. Karasik, St. Cloud State University; Lynnel Kiely, Truman College; H. D. Kirkland, Lake City Community College; Patricia E. Kixmiller, Miami Dade College; D. R. Klee, Kansas City, Missouri; Casimir Kotowski, Harry S. Truman City College; Errol Magidson, Richard J. Daley Community College; James T. Markley, Lord Fairfax Community College; Stephen McDougal, University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; David J. Meyer, Cedarville University; Karen Mitchell, University of Missouri; Catherine Montsinger, Johnson C. Smith University; Lynn Mulkey, Hofstra University; Roy Mumme, University of South Florida; Eleanor J. Myatt, Palm Beach Junior College; Quentin Newhouse Jr., Howard University; Earl Newman, Henry Ford Community College; Annette Palmer, Howard University; Robin Perrin, Pepperdine University; Joseph Pilkington-Duddle, Highland Beach, Florida; William Primus, Miami Dade College North Campus; Roger Rolison, Palm Beach Community College; William H. Rosberg, Kirkwood Community College; Dan Selakovich, Oklahoma State University; Henry A. Shockley, Boston University; Julie Smith, Mount Aloysius College; Ruth Smith, Miami Dade College; Scharlene Snowden, City University of New York, Medgar Evers College; Ronald Stubbs, Miami Dade College; Larry R. Stucki, Reading Area Community College; Barry Thompson, University of Rio Grande; Judy Thompson, University of Rio Grande; Elizabeth Trentanelli, Miami Dade College; Margaret Tseng, Marymount University; Edward Uliassi, Northeastern University; Angela Wartel, Lewis Clark State College; David Wells, Glendale Community College; Ted Williams, City College of Chicago; W. M. Wright, Lake City Community College; Norman R. Yetman, The University of Kansas; and George Zgourides Primus, Miami Dade College North Campus, among others who wished to remain anonymous.

据我所知,这是美国现存时间最长的大学教科书。它始于20世纪30年代,当时芝加哥的一些教授整理了他们的笔记,并把它们变成了这本书最终被整理成书。它在20世纪40年代和50年代逐渐演变成一部标准教材,到了20世纪60年代,埃尔金·F·亨特(Elgin F. Hunt)接手撰写,成为其唯一作者。我在20世纪70年代末接手了这本书,并对其进行了全面更新和修订,以反映最新的发展。我保留了他的名字作为书名,以体现这本书的起源,以及它是前辈学者共同努力的成果,并且参与撰写的人员队伍也在不断变化。

To my knowledge, this is the longest continuing college textbook in the United States. It began in the 1930s when some Chicago professors put together their notes and turned them into a book. It evolved through the 1940s and 1950s into a standard text, and then in the 1960s, Elgin F. Hunt took it over as the sole author. I took it over in the late 1970s, totally updating and revising it to reflect new developments. I have kept his name on the title to reflect the origins of the book and the fact that it is a collective effort of previous scholars, with a changing group of people working on it.

我还要感谢泰勒弗朗西斯出版社所有参与此事的人员,包括制作编辑弗朗西斯卡·托希尔和文字编辑达娜·理查兹。迪恩·伯肯坎普和刘易斯·霍德在监督和处理所有编辑问题方面做得非常出色。我还要感谢我以前在米德尔伯里学院的学生阿米莉亚·波拉德。她参与了本书的各个方面。我感谢他们的辛勤工作。最后,我要感谢我的妻子帮助我抽出时间来创作这本书。

I would also like to thank all the people at Taylor & Francis involved with this, including Production Editor, Francesca Tohill, and Copyeditor, Dana Richards. Dean Birkenkamp and Lewis Hodder did a great job supervising and handling all the editorial issues. I would also like to thank Amelia Pollard, a former student of mine at Middlebury College. She worked on various aspects of the book. I thank them for their hard work. Finally, I want to thank my wife for helping me find the time to work on the book.

第一部分 简介

Part I Introduction

第一社会科学及其方法

chapter 1Social science and its Methods

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-1

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-1

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 定义社会科学并解释其重要性
  • Define social science and explain why it is important
  • 列出各种社会科学
  • List the various social sciences
  • 阐述构成科学方法的九个步骤
  • State the nine steps that make up the scientific method
  • 讨论解决社会科学问题的一些合理方法
  • Discuss some reasonable approaches to problems in social science
  • 区分历史方法、案例方法和比较方法
  • Differentiate the historical method from the case method and the comparative method
  • 区分受过教育的常识和常识
  • Distinguish educated common sense from common sense
  • 解释为什么优秀的科学家总是愿意以新的方式看待问题
  • Explain why a good scientist is always open to new ways of looking at issues

2021年1月6日,一群美国公民冲进美国国会大厅,试图扰乱对乔·拜登总统选举人团制度正式选举的批准。这标志着唐纳德·特朗普四年美国总统任期的结束。他的总统生涯充满了动荡。他曾两次遭到国会弹劾,投票结果反映了党派立场。自由派精英从未承认他是合法总统,而他在2016年大选中的对手即使在承认败选后也称他的选举不合法。他们认为,一个运转良好的民主国家永远不会选出他。保守派对特朗普的看法褒贬不一,但约30%的美国民众强烈认同他的观点,最终他在2020年大选中仅以几个摇摆州的微弱差距落败。如果事态发展略有不同,结果很可能大相径庭。这场动荡是可以预见的。因此,在上一版中,我以对特朗普当选的选举之夜的如下描述作为本书的开篇:2016 年 11 月 8 日,人们聚集在(几乎任何一所东海岸学院或大学)的电视机前,期待为希拉里·克林顿成为美国首位女总统而欢呼。气氛很欢乐;民调预测克林顿将获胜。随着夜幕降临,气氛发生了变化。她的共和党对手唐纳德·特朗普,许多共和党建制派人士曾反对过他,表现好于预期;特朗普真的有机会;特朗普领先;特朗普赢了!震惊和敬畏几乎是唯一能形容这一幕的词。对其中的许多人来说,特朗普的胜利是灾难性的——他们认为这标志着他们所熟知的美国民主的终结。

On January 6,2021, a crowd of US citizens broke into the halls of the US Congress in an attempt to disrupt the ratification of the Electoral College formal election of President Joe Biden. Thus marked the end of the four-year term of Donald Trump as president of the United States. His years as president were fraught with turmoil. He was impeached twice by Congress, with votes reflecting party lines. The liberal elite never accepted him as a legitimate president, and his opponent in 2016 called his election illegitimate, even as she conceded defeat. Their belief was that a well-functioning democracy would never have elected him. Conservatives were mixed on Trump, but about 30 percent of the US population strongly agreed with him, and he lost the election in 2020 by only a small number of votes in a few swing states. The vote could have easily gone the other way, had things played out a little differently. The turmoil was predictable. Thus, in the last edition, I opened the book with the following description of election night when Trump was elected: On November 8, 2016, people gathered around the television at (insert just about any Eastern Seaboard College or University) expecting to cheer Hillary Clinton becoming the first woman president of the United States. The mood was happy; polls predicted a Clinton victory. As the night progressed, the mood changed. Donald Trump, her Republican opponent, who many establishment Republicans had opposed, was doing better than expected; Trump actually had a chance; Trump was leading; Trump had won! Shock and awe is about the only way to describe it. For many in that group, Trump’s victory was cataclysmic—they saw it as marking an end of American democracy as they knew it.

2021 年 1 月 6 日华盛顿示威活动。

The Jan 6, 2021 Washington demonstration.

©Tyler Merbler/维基百科

© Tyler Merbler/Wikipedia

同一天晚上,在(随便哪个南方小镇,乡村,以白人为主,工薪阶层,中西部,非大学城)的人们聚集在电视机前,却做出了截然相反的反应。他们的声音终于被听到了。即将上任的总统会实话实说,拨开迷雾,把自由派东部建制精英的政治正确性塞进他们自认为应该属于的圈子里。他们关心人人享有正义,但他们想要的正义也包括他们自己。他们厌倦了被视为卑鄙无耻;他们厌倦了那些优柔寡断的政客,他们的观点被过滤得如此之深,充其量不过是些空洞的思想之谈。他们厌倦了那些自以为有权将自己的价值观和世界观强加于人的政客。1

That same evening people gathered around the television in (insert just about any southern, rural, mainly white, working-class, midwestern, non-university town) and had a reverse reaction. Finally, they had been heard. Someone was coming into office who would tell it like it is, drain the swamp, and stick the liberal Eastern establishment elite’s political correctness up their collective wazoo, where they felt it belongs. They were concerned about justice for all, but they wanted a justice for all that included justice for them. They were tired of being considered despicable; they were tired of wishy-washy politicians whose views were so filtered that they were at best pablum of the mind. They were tired of politicians who felt they had the right to force their values and worldviews on everyone.1

分散在全国各地的其他群体对此反应不一。例如,有些人会直接受到特朗普在竞选中倡导的政策的影响。这些人包括黑人、少数族裔和移民等等。他们的担忧并非出于知识分子的考量,而是切实可行的。特朗普当选对政策意味着什么?移民政策会被终结吗?追梦者(非法进入美国,但几乎一生都生活在美国的孩子)会被驱逐出境吗?反歧视政策会被终结吗?……欢迎来到社会科学。

Other groups dispersed around the country had different reactions. For example, there were those who would be directly affected by the policies Trump had advocated in the campaign. These included black people, minorities, and immigrants, among others. Their concerns were not intellectual; their concerns were real and pragmatic. What would Trumps election mean for policy? Would immigration be ended? Would Dreamers (children who were brought to the United States illegally, but who had lived just about their entire life there) be deported? Would anti-discrimination policies be ended?. . . Welcome to social science.

特朗普执政四年。他的执政时期充满了分裂。东部自由派建制派始终不接受他获胜的事实,并竭力通过弹劾和其他一切合法手段将他赶下台。特朗普认为,这些举动表明存在一个“深层政府”统治着美国,并且不愿接受他的当选。他的回应是挑战美国选举制度的公正性和合法性。

Trump stayed in office for four years. His time in power was divisive. The Eastern liberal establishment never came to accept that he had won, and fought to push him out of office through impeachment and whatever other legal methods they could find. Trump saw such attempts as signs that a “deep state” existed that ruled the United States and that was unwilling to accept his election. He responded by challenging the fairness and legitimacy of the US election system.

本书前几版以探讨9/11恐怖袭击世界贸易中心事件及其对社会和文化的影响作为开篇。9/11事件成为探讨政治、社会、文化和经济生活层面相互联系的焦点。这一事件将美国凝聚在一起。特朗普的胜选则截然不同,但它也成为这些相互联系的焦点——只是这一次,焦点在于那些拉开美国社会分裂而非推动其团结的力量。美国在政治、文化和经济上都已两极分化。双方的敌意在特朗普担任总统期间持续存在,这也是2020年大选同样充满分歧的原因。在2020年大选中,由于各种原因,特朗普自2016年以来失去了重要的支持者。他的对手乔·拜登主张采取更为文明的方式,但他也希望尽其所能地推行自己的政策。双方都不愿理解对方的观点,也不愿在政策上做出足以达成两党政策协议的妥协。因此,昔日的文明礼貌能否重现,还是已被精英之间本能的内斗和双方对不合法性的呼声永久取代,仍有待观察。这些问题将是本书探讨的关键社会问题。这是因为社会科学研究的引导个人行为的社会、文化、心理、经济和政治力量——它分析的是那些推动社会分裂和凝聚社会的力量。在2020年的大选中,你可以看到这些力量正在发挥作用。一位承诺要团结美国的政治家击败了特朗普。他是否真的能做到这一点,还有待观察。

Recent previous editions of this book began with a discussion of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and its effect on society and culture. September 11 served as a focal point for discussions of the interconnections among political, social, cultural, and economic aspects of life. It was an event that pulled the United States together. Trumps victory was a quite different event, but it also served as a focal point of the interconnections—only this time the focus, was on forces pulling US society apart, not pushing it together. The United States has become polarized politically, culturally, and economically. The animosity on both sides continued through Trump’s presidency, which is why the election of 2020 was equally divisive. In the 2020 election, for a variety of reasons, Trump had lost important elements of his supporters since 2016. His opponent, Joe Biden, advocated a more civil approach, but he was also interested in implementing his policies in whatever way he could. Neither side showed a willingness to understand the other side’s view and to compromise on policy to a degree that would lead to any bipartisan policy agreement. So whether the older civility can be brought back, or whether it has been permanently replaced by visceral infighting among elites and calls for illegitimacy on both sides, remains to be seen. Those questions will be key social questions that will be explored throughout the book. That’s because social science is the study of social, cultural, psychological, economic, and political forces that guide individuals in their actions— it is the analysis of those forces that push society apart and pull it together. In the election of 2020, you could see those forces are work. A politician who promised to pull the United States together, defeated Trump. Whether he can actually do so remains to be seen.

正式的社会科学相对较新。尽管如此,关于人类社会生活的信息已经积累了大量。这些信息被用于构建关于人类社会的本质、发展和运作的知识体系。社会科学就是对这一知识体系的称呼。

Formal social science is relatively new. Nevertheless, a vast amount of information has been accumulated concerning the social life of human beings. This information has been used in building a system of knowledge about the nature, growth, and functioning of human societies. Social science is the name given to that system of knowledge.

所有知识都包括(1)关于人类的知识,包括他们的文化和产品;以及(2)关于自然环境的知识。人类文化一直在变化,关于人类文化的知识自远古时代人类首次呈现出其独特的人性以来就一直在逐渐积累。但直到近代,这些知识才具有现代意义上的科学性。科学知识是经过系统地收集、分类、关联和阐释的知识。科学关注的是学习概念并将这些概念应用于具体事物,而不仅仅是学习大量的信息。

All knowledge is (1) knowledge of human beings, including their culture and products, and (2) knowledge of the natural environment. Human culture has been changing, and knowledge about it has been gradually accumulating ever since the far distant time when humans first assumed their distinctively human character. But until rather recent times, this knowledge was not scientific in the modern sense. Scientific knowledge is knowledge that has been systematically gathered, classified, related, and interpreted. Science is concerned with learning the concepts and applying those concepts to particulars, rather than just learning a vast amount of information.

原始民族的许多知识是在无意识中习得的,就像我们今天仍然在无意识中开始使用母语,并习得我们文化中的许多基本元素一样。他们大多接受他们所发现的世界,如果需要任何解释,他们就会编造超自然的解释。一些原始民族相信,每条溪流、每棵树木、每块岩石都蕴含着一个控制其行为的神灵。

Primitive peoples acquired much of their knowledge unconsciously, just as we today still begin the use of our native language and acquire many of the basic elements in our culture unconsciously. For the most part, they accepted the world as they found it, and if any explanations seemed called for, they invented supernatural ones. Some primitive peoples believed that every stream, tree, and rock contained a spirit that controlled its behavior.

在现代,我们强调对科学知识的探索。我们将人类知识划分为若干领域,每一门科学都代表着对某一领域数据的系统收集和研究。这些领域大致可以分为两大类:社会科学和自然科学。为了便于更深入的研究和理解,每个领域又细分为若干专门的科学或学科。社会科学是人类知识的领域,涉及人类群体生活的各个方面。自然科学关注人类生存的自然环境。它包括物理学和化学等研究物质、运动、空间、质量和能量规律的科学;它也包括研究生物的生物科学。知识不仅仅是科学知识,还有实践智慧(phronesis),它是通过哲学反思和探究获得的知识,以及通过实践学习获得的实践知识的结合。科学知识依赖于逻辑、理性和经验证明,而实践智慧则依赖于所有这些,以及对事物的本能感受,以及通过认真思考和与他人讨论获得的理解。实践智慧的某些方面是本能的;例如,一只鸟本能地知道向南迁徙过冬,或者一位母亲本能地知道如何安抚她的婴儿,这些都拥有知识,但这些并非科学知识。这些知识是如何习得的,以及人们如何“知道”这些知识,这很难确定,但它们确实是知识。

In modern times, our emphasis is on the search for scientific knowledge. We have divided human knowledge into a number of areas and fields, and every science represents the systematic collection and study of data in one of these areas, which can be grouped roughly into two major fields—social science and natural science. Each of these fields is subdivided into a number of specialized sciences or disciplines to facilitate more intensive study and deeper understanding. Social science is the field of human knowledge that deals with all aspects of the group life of human beings. Natural science is concerned with the natural environment in which human beings exist. It includes such sciences as physics and chemistry, which deal with the laws of matter, motion, space, mass, and energy; it also includes the biological sciences, which deal with living things. There is more to knowledge than scientific knowledge. There is also phronesis, or wisdom, which is a combination of knowledge acquired through philosophical reflection and inquiry and practical knowledge that one acquires through learning by doing. Whereas scientific knowledge relies on logic, rationality, and empirical proofs, phronesis relies on all those plus an instinctual feel for something, and understanding acquired through careful reflection and discussion with others. Some aspects of phronesis are instinctual; for example a bird that instinctually knows to migrate south for the winter, or a mother who knows instinctually how to comfort her baby, has knowledge, but it is not scientific knowledge. How that knowledge is learned and how one “knows” it is difficult to determine, but it is knowledge.

这些替代性的知识类型对社会科学至关重要,因为社会政策建立在科学、哲学和实践知识的融合之上。科学告诉我们物理上什么是可能的;哲学和实践知识告诉我们政策的目标应该是什么;而三者的融合则告诉我们如何才能最好地实现这些目标。我们不会花太多时间讨论这些替代性的知识类型,只是为了强调它们的重要性,并提醒大家,单靠科学本身并不能提供政策解决方案。科学有助于指导,但并不能决定我们应该做什么。

These alternative types of knowledge are important for social science since social policy is built on a blend of scientific, philosophical, and practical knowledge. Science tells us what physically is possible; philosophy and practical knowledge tell us what the goals of policy should be; and a blend of all three tells us how to best achieve those goals. We won’t spend a lot of time discussing these alternative types of knowledge, other than to acknowledge their importance and to remind you that science on its own does not lead to policy solutions. Science helps guide, but does not determine, what we should do.

不过,我将向你介绍道德哲学家用来获得哲学真理的一种工具——它被称为“无知之幕”或“公正旁观者工具”。它要求你脱离自身特定的处境,从一个不知道自己是哪种人的人的角度来判断问题,这样更有可能做到公正。其目标是摆脱自身对问题的狭隘认知,得出一个更中立的观点,从而更有可能获得广泛的共识。由于很难从他人的角度看待问题,因此“公正旁观者工具”要求你与来自不同背景、可能不同意你观点的人进行广泛的讨论和互动。

I will, however, introduce you to one tool that moral philosophers use to arrive at philosophical truths—it’s called the veil of ignorance or the impartial spectator tool. It involves removing yourself from your particular situation, and judging an issue from the perspective of someone who doesn’t know which individual he or she will be, and thus will be more likely to be impartial. The goal is to escape one’s particular narrow perception of the problem and to arrive at a more neutral view that is more likely to gain broad consensus. Since it is hard to look at issues from other’s perspectives, the impartial spectator tool requires extensive discussions and interactions with others who come from different backgrounds and likely disagree with you.

这些讨论的目的并非为了赢得辩论,而是为了共同探寻真理——这种方法有时被称为“为天论辩” ——这种论辩的目的并非为了胜利而胜利,而是为了加深理解。这样的论辩可以引向所谓的哲学和道德真理。

Those discussions are to be carried out not with the goal of winning an argument, but instead with the goal of searching jointly for the truth—a method sometimes called argumentation for the sake of heaven—argumentation whose goal is not to win for the sake of winning, but to further one’s understanding. Such argumentation leads to what might be called philosophical and moral truths.

在将这些哲学真理融入到个人见解中时,第三个领域或研究领域——人文学科——变得重要。人文学科涵盖文学、音乐、艺术和哲学。

In adding these philosophical truths into ones insights, a third field or studies—the humanities—becomes important. Humanities deals with literature, music, art, and philosophy.

人文学科与社会科学密切相关,因为它们都研究人类及其文化。然而,社会科学最关注的是决定人类行为普遍模式的文化基本要素。人文学科则关注人类文化的特殊方面,主要关注我们试图表达精神和审美价值,以及探索生命意义的努力。社会科学以系统、科学的方式研究问题,而人文学科则更关注情感本身,而非用来强化这种关注的系统。政策制定需要人文学科与科学的融合。

The humanities are closely related to social science in that both deal with humans and their culture. Social science, however, is most concerned with those basic elements of culture that determine the general patterns of human behavior. The humanities deal with special aspects of human culture and are primarily concerned with our attempts to express spiritual and aesthetic values and to discover the meaning of life. Whereas the social sciences study issues in a systematic, scientific way, the focus of the humanities is more on the emotions and feelings themselves than on the system employed to sharpen that focus. Policy requires a blending of the humanities with science.

社会科学的重要性远远超出了具体的社会科学范畴。社会科学思维是许多法律以及我们对国际关系和政府理解的基础。所有这些领域都是社会科学研究的自然产物。因此,任何试图理解当前世界事件的人,都有必要掌握社会科学知识。

The importance of social science goes far beyond the specific social sciences. It is social science thinking that underlies much of the law as well as our understanding of international relations and government. All these fields are the natural by-products of social science inquiry. Thus, a knowledge of social science is necessary for anyone trying to understand current world events.

社会科学

Social science

对人类而言,没有哪个学科比社会科学更重要。它不仅帮助我们理解社会,还能帮助我们避免冲突,过上更充实的生活。阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦曾精辟地总结道:“政治比物理更难,糟糕的政治比糟糕的物理更容易让世界灭亡。”

No field of study is more important to human beings than the social sciences. It helps us not only understand society, but also helps us avoid conflict and lead more fulfilling lives. Albert Einstein nicely summed it up: “Politics is more difficult than physics and the world is more likely to die from bad politics than from bad physics.”

由于人类文化的所有表现形式都相互关联、相互依存,因此,要真正理解人类社会,我们必须对其所有主要方面有所了解。如果我们只关注某些方面而忽略其他方面,就会产生扭曲的认识。然而,当今社会科学如此庞大复杂,没有哪个学生能够完全掌握。因此,社会科学本身被细分为人类学、社会学、历史学、地理学、经济学、政治学和心理学。(本章附框对每个学科进行了简要介绍。)

Because all expressions of human culture are related and interdependent, to gain a real understanding of human society we must have some knowledge of all its major aspects. If we concentrate on some aspects and neglect others, we will have a distorted picture. But social science today is such a vast complex that no one student can hope to master all of it. Thus, social science itself has been broken up into anthropology, sociology, history, geography, economics, political science, and psychology. (The boxes in this chapter provide a brief introduction to each of these disciplines.)

这个社会科学学科列表既太宽泛,又太狭窄。它太宽泛是因为历史、地理和心理学等部分学科不应该被纳入社会科学。例如,历史学的部分学科属于人文学科,心理学的部分学科属于自然科学。它太狭窄是因为新兴的社会科学正在兴起,例如认知科学和社会生物学,它们融合了新的发现和看待现实的新视角。(参见“不断发展的社会科学”专栏。)

Ihis list or social science disciplines is both too broad and too narrow. It is too broad because parts of the fields of history, geography, and psychology should not be included as social sciences. For instance, parts of history belong in the humanities, and parts of psychology belong in the natural sciences. The list is too narrow because new social sciences are emerging, such as cognitive science and sociobiology, which incorporate new findings and new ways of looking at reality. (See the box on The Evolving Social Sciences.)

由于所有知识都是相互关联的,因此在定义和编目社会科学时不可避免地会遇到一些问题。通常,很难确定一门社会科学的界限在哪里,另一门社会科学的起点在哪里。不仅各个社会科学之间相互关联,而且作为一个整体的社会科学也与自然科学和人文科学息息相关。那首老歌“髋骨连着股骨……”的歌词,对于社会科学来说再贴切不过了。要了解历史,了解地理是有帮助的,甚至是必要的;要了解经济学,了解心理学是必要的。类似的道理也适用于所有社会科学。

Because all knowledge is interrelated, there are inevitable problems in denning and cataloging the social sciences. Often, it is difficult to know where one social science ends and another begins. Not only are the individual social sciences interrelated, but the social sciences as a whole body are also related to the natural sciences and the humanities. The strains of the old song, “Tire hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone, . . are appropriate to the social sciences. To understand history, it is helpful, even necessary, to understand geography; to understand economics, it is necessary to understand psychology. Similar arguments can be made for all of the social sciences.

在对各种社会科学进行定义和描述时,难点之一是社会科学家自身对于他们究竟在做什么或应该做什么并不一致。在准备本章的过程中,我们与多位专注于特定领域的社会科学家会面,并请他们解释他们的领域与其他领域的区别。特定社会科学领域的专家之间几乎没有共识,更不用说所有社会科学家之间了。一位愤世嫉俗者曾经说过:“经济学就是经济学家做的事情。” 如果我们用任何其他社会科学及其从业者来代替“经济学”和“经济学家”,我们就能得到一个尽可能完善的定义。遗憾的是,这对于那些不了解社会科学家工作的人来说帮助不大。

One of the difficulties in presenting definitions and descriptions of the various social sciences is that social scientists themselves do not agree on what it is they do, or should be doing. In preparing this chapter, we met with groups of social scientists specializing in specific fields and asked them to explain what distinguishes their field from others. There was little agreement among specialists in a particular social science, let alone among all social scientists. A cynic once said, “Economics is what economists do.” If we replaced “economics” and “economists” with any of the other social sciences and its practitioners, we would have as good a definition as possible. Unfortunately, it would not be very helpful to those who do not know what social scientists do.

这些讨论确实揭示了社会科学家个体之间的一个重要差异:即使两位社会科学家思考同一问题,由于他们的训练背景不同,他们关注的方面也有所不同。地理学家关注空间和空间相对性,经济学家关注市场激励,而政治学家则关注群体决策。因此,尽管我们可能无法明确地定义各种社会科学的领域,但本书中我们会从不同的视角来思考问题,让您大致了解不同的研究方法。

One important difference among the individual social scientists did come out of these discussions: Even when two social scientists are considering the same issue, because their training is different, they focus on different aspects of that problem. Geographers fixate on spaces and spatial relativities, economists on market incentives, and political scientists on group decision making. Thus, although we might not be able to define, unambiguously, the domains of the various social sciences, we can give you a sense of the various approaches as we consider issues from various perspectives throughout the book.

社会科学的研究不仅仅是对单个社会科学的研究。虽然要成为一名优秀的社会科学家,你必须了解每个组成部分,但也必须了解它们之间的相互关联。如果过早地进行专业化,社会科学家可能会忽视理解现代问题至关重要的相互关系。正因如此,开设一门涵盖所有社会科学的课程至关重要。

The study of social science is more than the study of the individual social sciences. Although it is true that to be a good social scientist you must know each of those components, you must also know how they interrelate. By specializing too early, social scientists can lose sight of the interrelationships that are so essential to understanding modern problems. That is why it is necessary to have a course covering all the social sciences.

要了解社会科学是如何以及何时衰落的,你必须研究过去。想象一下,你是 1062 年意大利城市博洛尼亚的一名学生,这里是西方世界最早的主要大学之一的所在地。这所大学没有建筑物;它仅由几位教授和学生组成。没有学费。教授讲课结束后,如果你喜欢,你就得付钱。如果你不喜欢,教授就会发现自己既没有学生也没有钱。如果我们回到更早的时候,比如公元前 5 世纪的希腊,我们可以看到哲学家苏格拉底走在雅典的街道上,与他的同伴争论。他向他们提出问题,然后又提出其他问题,引导这些人按照他希望他们推理的方式进行推理(这被称为苏格拉底方法)。

To understand how and when social science broke up, you must study the past. Imagine for a moment that you’re a student in 1062, in the Italian city of Bologna, site of one of the first major universities in the Western world. The university has no buildings; it consists merely of a few professors and students. There is no tuition fee. At the end of a professor’s lecture, if you like it, you pay. And if you don’t like it, the professor finds himself without students and without money. If we go back still earlier, say to Greece in the fifth century B.C., we can see the philosopher Socrates walking around the streets of Athens, arguing with his companions. He asks them questions, and then other questions, leading these people to reason the way he wants them to reason (this became known as the Socratic method).

从那时起,时代变了;世界各地涌现出大学,并在大学内设立学院。牛津大学是最早的大学之一,现在有39所学院。与之相关的学院,以及教育机构的发展和正规化,改变了学生和教师的角色。随着知识的积累,一个人学习知识变得越来越困难,更不用说记住所有知识了。在十六世纪,人们仍然可以渴望知晓一切,而文艺复兴时期的人(那时的人们比现在更加性别歧视)的定义是被期望了解一切。

Times have changed since then; universities Sprang up throughout the world and created colleges within the universities. Oxford, one of the first universities, now has thirty-nine colleges associated with it, and the development and formalization of educational institutions has changed the roles of both students and faculty. As knowledge accumulated, it became more and more difficult for one person to learn, let alone retain, it all. In the sixteenth century, one could still aspire to know all there was to know, and the definition of the Renaissance man (people were even more sexist then than they are now) was one who was expected to know about everything.

不幸的是,至少对于那些想要了解一切的人来说,信息量持续呈指数级增长,而大脑的体积却只略有增大。解决这个问题的方法不是试图了解所有事物的一切。今天我们必须专攻。这就是为什么社会科学从自然科学中分离出来,而社会科学又被细分为不同的分支学科,例如人类学和社会学。

Unfortunately, at least for someone who wants to know everything, the amount of information continues to grow exponentially, while the size of the brain has grown only slightly. The way to deal with the problem is not to try to know everything about everything. Today we must specialize. That is why social science separated from the natural sciences and why social science, in turn, has been broken down into various subfields, such as anthropology and sociology.

专业化有利有弊,如今许多社会问题都由不同的社会科学家团队共同处理。每位科学家都发挥各自的专长。例如,其中一位作者是经济学家,但他与地理学家、社会学家、人类学家、政治学家和心理学家合作开展项目。他最近的一本书是与一位物理学家合著的。越来越多的跨学科专业正在涌现;本书的一位作者在他所在的学校同时在经济学系和国际政治与经济系任教。公共政策的跨学科研究生院发展迅猛。在这些项目中,学生学习所有社会科学知识,但专注于其中一门学科。图1.1以图形方式概述了知识的演变和当今社会科学的发展,始于希腊;我们本可以更早地开始,因为希腊人的大部分知识都来自中东和亚洲,但我们不得不在某个地方将其截断。(本章末尾的附录扩展了此图中的概念。)

There are advantages and disadvantages to specialization, and many social problems today are dealt with by teams of various social scientists. Each brings his or her specialty to the table. For example, one of the authors is an economist but works on projects with geographers, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, and psychologists. He wrote his most recent book with a physicist. More and more interdisciplinary majors are being created; one of the authors of this book teaches in both the economics department and the international politics and economics department at his school. Interdisciplinary graduate schools of public policy have grown enormously. In these programs, students study all the social sciences while specializing in one. Figure 1.1 provides a graphic overview of the evolution of knowledge and the present social sciences starting with Greece; we could have started earlier, since the Greeks took much of their knowledge from the Middle East and Asia, but we had to cut it off somewhere. (The appendix at the end of this chapter expands on the ideas in this diagram.)

社会科学作为规则体系

Social Science as a System of Rules

如今,知识量的增长速度比以往任何时候都快。那么,如何才能形成一个统一的社会科学理论呢?答案在于抽象,在于发现规则或关系(而非简单的事实)以及将规则与其他规则联系起来的能力。

Today the amount of knowledge is increasing faster than ever. How, then, can a unified social science theory ever be formulated? The answer is found in abstraction and the ability to discover rules or relationships (rather than simply facts) and rules relating rules to other rules.

要理解掌握规则的重要性,回想一下小学学习加法的时候。你不需要记住127加1448的和,而是学习一种关于加法的算法(规则的别称)(7 + 8 = 15;记下5,并进位1……)。那时你只需要记住一些关系。通过将数字系统从十进制改为二进制(只有0和1),你大大减少了记忆量(你只需要知道0 + 0 = 0;0 + 1 = 1;以及1 + 1 = 10),你可以反复应用相同的规则,将所有可能的数字相加(这一发现在计算机的发展中发挥了重要作用)。掌握规则可以让你免于大量的记忆,同时还能让你获取大量信息。

To understand the importance of knowing rules, think back to grade school when you learned addition. You didn’t memorize the sum of 127 and 1,448. Instead you learned an algorithm (a fancy name for a rule) about adding (7 + 8 = 15; write down the 5 and carry the 1...). Then you had to memorize only a few relationships. By changing the number system from a base ten system to a binary system (0 and 1 are the only numbers), you cut substantially the amount of memorization (all you need to know is 0 + 0 = 0; 0 + 1 = 1; and 1 + 1 = 10) and you could apply the same rule again and again, adding all possible numbers (an insight that played an important role in the development of the computer). Knowing the rules saved you from enormous amounts of memorization, but nonetheless gave you access to a large amount of information.

另一种看待这个问题的方式是想象一下图书馆。如果你有一个小型图书馆,你几乎可以了解里面的所有内容,但一旦你的图书馆变得更大,你很快就会发现,藏书越多,就越难知道里面有什么。然而,如果你建立了一个归档系统,例如杜威十进制分类法或国会图书馆系统,你就可以通过归档系统访问书籍。归档系统的规则就像加法、减法或代数的规则一样,为你提供了获取大量信息的钥匙。一旦掌握了一般规则,就可以应用于大量的细节问题。你学习的层次越高(关于规则的规则),你就能用更少的记忆掌握越多的信息。2

Another way to look at the problem is to think of the library. If you have a small library, you can know nearly everything in it, but once your library gets larger, you will quickly find that having more books makes it harder to know what’s in there. However, if you put in place a filing system, such as the Dewey decimal system or the Library of Congress system, you can access the books through a filing system. The rules of the filing system give you the key to great amounts of information, just as the rules of addition, subtraction, or algebra do. General rules, once learned, can be applied to large numbers of particulars. The higher you go (rules about rules about rules), the more you can know with less memorization.2

图1.1知识概览。知识的发展过程错综复杂,但一图胜千言,我们提供了这张知识发展简图。或许,它胜过五百字。

Figure 1.1Knowledge at a glance. The development of knowledge is messy, but assuming that a picture is worth a thousand words, we offer this sketch of the development of knowledge. Maybe its worth five hundred words.

所有这些都与社会科学息息相关,因为社会科学是由规则或关系维系的。如果要形成一个统一的社会科学理论,那将是因为一些学生开始思考规则,以及各种社会科学的规则如何相互契合。如果你理解了一般概念,你就能将它们应用于各种情况。因此,未来的“统一社会科学家”不一定了解某一特定社会科学的所有事实。每个专业都将保留其特性,并可能变得更加

All this is relevant to social science because social science is held together by rules or relationships. If there is to be a unified social science theory, it will be because some student started thinking about rules and how the rules of the various social sciences can fit together. If you understand the general concepts, you can apply them in a variety of circumstances. Thus the future “unified social scientists” will not necessarily know all the facts of a particular social science. Each of the specialties will retain its identity and will likely become even

更加专业化。但随着专业化的出现,也催生了对一种新的专业化的需求,这种专业化专注于将社会科学的各个组成部分联系在一起。新的统一的社会科学家将了解各个社会科学的一般规则以及一门社会科学与其他社会科学相互作用的规则,但他们不会了解其中任何一门社会科学的所有具体事实。

more specialized. But as that specialization occurs, it creates the need for a new specialization that concentrates on tying together the various component parts of social science. The new unified social scientists will know the general rules of the individual social sciences and the rules of how one social science interacts with another, but they will not know all the specific facts of any one of them.

前述论点在教科书的开篇就抛给你,显得有些沉重,因为它要求你不仅要了解各个社会科学领域的知识,还要超越这些知识,努力理解它们的综合。超越这些知识才是学习的最终意义所在,也是学习如此具有挑战性的原因。我们很想说,我们能够引导你找到一个统一的社会科学理论,但事实上,我们所能做的只是给你一些鼓励和激励。在全面了解社会科学之后,你可以决定自己想专攻哪一门(如果有的话);是否应该努力将它们结合起来;或者是否应该放弃所有方法,去读医学预科。

The preceding argument is a heavy one to throw at you in the first pages of a textbook because it asks you not only to know the lessons of the individual social sciences, but also to go beyond and strive for an understanding of their synthesis. Going beyond is ultimately what learning is all about and what makes it so challenging. We would like to be able to say that we can guide you to a unified social science theory, but the truth is that all we can do is give you a boost and encouragement. After surveying the social sciences, you can decide in which one, if any, you want to specialize; whether you should work toward tying them all together; or whether you should bag the whole approach and go into a pre-med program.

科学方法及其应用

The Scientific Method and its Application

科学方法是一套关于如何建立规则的规则。运用科学方法或许是研究社会科学最重要的工具,因为它不仅能让你汲取各个社会科学领域的经验教训,还能让你超越这些经验教训,努力理解它们的综合性。

The scientific method is a set of rules about how to establish rules. The use of the scientific method is perhaps the most important tool you can have in studying social science because it enables you not only to learn the lessons of the individual social sciences, but also to go beyond and strive for an understanding of their synthesis.

有利于科学探究的条件只有在社会中某些态度得到发展或容忍的情况下,科学探究才有可能。成功的科学探究不仅需要研究者的智力,还需要研究者具备某些心理态度。其中之一就是好奇心,它促使人们提出两个问题:为什么?以及如何?另一个是怀疑态度,它促使人们重新审视过去的解释并重新评估过去的证据。为了重新审视和重新评估,研究者需要客观性,这使他们能够公正地寻求真理,并尽一切努力不让个人的先入之见、偏见或欲望歪曲观察到的事实或影响对这些事实的解释。当好奇心、怀疑态度和客观性这三种态度结合在一起时,科学探究就能蓬勃发展。

Conditions Favorable to Scientific Inquiry Scientific inquiry is possible only in a society in which certain attitudes are developed or tolerated. Successful scientific investigation requires from the investigator not only intelligence but certain mental attitudes as well. One of these is curiosity, which makes people ask two questions: Why? and How? Another is skepticism, which makes people reexamine past explanations and reevaluate past evidence. To reexamine and reevaluate, investigators need objectivity, which enables them to seek impartially for the truth, to make every effort not to allow personal preconceptions, prejudices, or desires to color the observed facts or influence the interpretation of those facts. When these three attitudes—curiosity, skepticism, and objectivity—come together, scientific inquiry can flourish.

在文字出现之前的部落社会中,科学探究方法的发展面临巨大的障碍。与现代社会相比,这类社会受习俗和传统的束缚更为深重。传统的行事方式被视为唯一正确的方式。此外,任何严重偏离既定程序的行为都可能被视为对群体的威胁。

In preliterate tribal societies, the obstacles to the development of scientific methods of inquiry are very great. Such societies are much more bound by custom and tradition than are modern societies. The traditional way of doing things is regarded as the only right way. Moreover, any serious deviation from established procedures is likely to be regarded as a danger to the group.

我们不能将中世纪的欧洲归类为前文字时代或部落时代。然而,当时对传统、古代权威和宗教教义的尊崇如此强烈,以至于科学精神的成长受到阻碍。现代科学的自由发展不得不等到十字军东征、文艺复兴、伟大的航海探索和宗教改革等事件动摇了传统的束缚。

We cannot classify Europe in the Middle Ages as either preliterate or tribal. Nevertheless, respect for tradition, for ancient authorities, and for religious dictates was so strong then that the growth of a scientific spirit was stunted. The free development of modern science had to wait until such events as the Crusades, the Renaissance, the great voyages of discovery, and the Reformation had loosened the hold of tradition.

科学方法的本质现代科学基于这样一个假设:宇宙是有序的,受因果律的支配。任何给定的一组情况总是

Nature of the Scientific Method Modern science is based on the assumption that this is an orderly universe, ruled by the law of cause and effect. Any given set of circumstances always

会产生相同的结果。如果看似相同的情况却产生不同的结果,那么它们实际上并不相同;存在一些显著的差异,但却被忽略了。进一步的调查应该能够揭示这种差异究竟是什么。

produces the same result. If seemingly identical situations have different results, they were not really alike; some significant difference existed and was overlooked. Further investigation should disclose what this difference was.

科学并不能为宇宙及其现象提供终极解释。时间、空间、物质、能量——存在本身——都是奥秘,其终极本质或许永远超出人类探索的范围。但一个公认的科学理论,在某种程度上,可以被视为对科学定律的解释。

Science offers no final explanations of the universe and its phenomena. Time, space, matter, energy—existence itself—are mysteries the ultimate nature of which is probably forever beyond the grasp of the human search. But an accepted scientific theory may be regarded as an explanation, up to a certain point, of a scientific law.

科学研究很少是简单的。每个知识领域都有其独特的问题,研究人员必须始终根据所处理情况的特性调整其研究方法。在某些领域,一种非常重要的研究方法是设置和开展受控实验。

Scientific investigation is seldom simple. Each field of knowledge has its special problems, and investigators must always adjust their methods to the peculiarities of the situation they are dealing with. A method of investigation that is of great importance in some fields is the setting up and carrying out of controlled experiments.

实验方法及其局限性实验方法是一种分离因果因素的方法。它是指仅使用一个变量进行多次实验。如果实验结果不同,则该变量很可能就是原因。3化学、物理学和生物学中,此类受控实验在发现事实和检验假设方面发挥着重要作用。在这些科学领域,研究人员可以创造一种环境,使所有与问题相关的重要因素都能得到控制。

The Experimental Method and Its Limitations The experimental method is a method of separating out causal factors. It consists of running an experiment many times with only one variant. If the results of the experiments are different, that one variant is most likely the cause.3 In chemistry, physics, and biology, such controlled experiments play an important role in discovering facts and testing hypotheses. In these sciences, an investigator can create a situation in which all the significant factors that bear on a problem can be controlled.

然而,当科学家无法控制对解决问题至关重要的情境时,实验方法的应用就会受到限制。在社会科学领域,受控实验方法的应用较少,除非是处理涉及较小群体的某些关系,因为研究人员无法控制情境。例如,要证明或反驳“高关税带来繁荣”这一命题,一种方法是,在相当长的一段时间内对所有进入美国的商品征收非常高的关税,同时保持所有其他影响商业活动的因素不变。如果随后繁荣程度持续增长,我们就有充分的证据支持“高关税是繁荣原因”这一论点。没有任何研究人员,比如经济学家,能够控制一个国家的关税政策;即使她能够控制,在高关税生效期间,许多其他社会变革也会发生,例如罢工、新兴产业的兴起,甚至可能是战争。毫无疑问,其中一些变化对国家繁荣状况的影响将比高关税大得多,并且将使我们无法将高关税的影响与所有这些其他事件的影响区分开来。

There are, however, limits to the use of the experimental method when a scientist cannot control the situations that are significant for the solution of problems. In the social sciences, less use can be made of the method of controlled experiment, except in dealing with certain relationships that involve rather small groups, because the investigator cannot control the situations. For example, one way to prove or disprove the proposition that high tariffs bring prosperity would be to apply very heavy tariffs to all goods entering the United States for a considerable period of time, while holding constant all other factors affecting business activity. If a sustained increase in prosperity followed, we would then have substantial evidence to support the thesis that high tariffs are a cause of prosperity. No investigator, let us say an economist, can control the country’s tariff policy; and even if she could, while the high tariff was in effect many other social changes would be taking place, such as strikes, the establishment of new industries, and perhaps even wars. Some of these other changes would doubtless have much more influence on the state of national prosperity than would the high tariff and would make it impossible to separate out the effects of the high tariff from the effects of all these other events.

社会科学家感兴趣的大多数问题都涉及非常庞大的群体,通常是整个社会。受控实验无法解决此类问题。然而,当社会科学家能够通过实验室和实地实验深入了解问题时,他们至少可以部分地控制环境。例如,谷歌公司经常使用实地实验,随机改变广告的呈现方式。一个广告可能说“半价”,另一个广告可能说“五折”。虽然这些广告的含义相同,但人们的反应并不一定相同。然后,​​这些公司会分析结果,并根据最有效的呈现方式来设计未来的广告。每次你上网,你就为公司提供了进行实地实验的机会,以找出如何从你身上赚取更多利润。社会科学家也研究自然实验,即两个相似的地区或实体选择不同的政策,并且可以系统地研究不同政策的影响。通过自然实验,研究人员无法获得完美的控制,但他们可以获得一些控制。

Most problems of interest to social scientists involve very large groups of people, often society as a whole. Controlled experiments cannot be used to solve such problems. When, however, social scientists can gain insight into a problem through laboratory and field experiments, they can, at least partially, control the environment. For example, often firms on Google use field experiments, randomly varying the way an advertisement is presented to people. One ad might state “one-half off”; the other might state “50 percent off.” Although these have the same meaning, the way people respond to them is not necessarily the same. The firms then analyze the results and structure future ads to reflect the presentation that was most effective. Every time you are on the Internet, you provide opportunities for firms to conduct field experiments to figure out how to make more money off you. Social scientists also study natural experiments, which occur when two similar areas or entities choose different policies, and the effects of the different policies can be systematically Studied. With natural experiments, researchers do not get perfect control, but they get some.

此外,社会科学家使用实验室实验,让人们进入实验室,研究他们的行为,然后将该行为与其他信息联系起来

Additionally, social scientists use laboratory experiments, in which they have people come into the lab, where they study their behavior, and then relate that behavior to other information

他们能找到关于这些事情的信息。其中最著名的一个实验是斯坦福棉花糖实验,心理学家们研究了四岁儿童延迟满足的能力。他们给每个孩子一块棉花糖,并承诺如果孩子愿意等二十分钟再吃,就给他们两块。之后,他们研究了这些学生在接下来的二十年里取得的进步,发现那些能够延迟满足的学生心理适应能力更强,更可靠,成绩也比那些不能延迟满足的学生更高。

they can find about them. One of the most famous of these is known as the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment, in which psychologists studied four-year-olds’ ability to delay gratification. They gave each child a marshmallow, but promised him or her two if the child would wait twenty minutes before eating it. They then studied the progress of these students for the next twenty years, and found that those students who could delay gratification were psychologically better adjusted, more dependable persons, and received higher grades than those who could not.

未来,随着计算机技术的进一步发展,社会科学家将利用虚拟社会系统来研究政策问题。在虚拟社会系统中,由众多互动个体组成的计算机模型构建了一个虚拟系统,可以模拟现实世界中发生的事情。由于社会系统的复杂性,这种虚拟系统仍然是未来的希望,而非现实。

In the future, with further advances in computer technology, social scientists will study policy issues using virtual social systems in which a computer model of numerous interacting individuals creates a virtual system that can analog what occurs in the real world. Because of the complexity of social systems, such virtual systems remain a hope for the future, not a reality.

社会实验有时被称为实验,但除非它们有一个遵循不同路径的“对照”,从而可以作为自然实验进行研究,否则它们就不是我们所说的实验。社会实验仅仅是引入和“尝试”新的社会政策。例如,俄勒冈州对医疗保险融资的改革,或佛罗里达州对教育经费券的实验,都可以被称为社会实验。区别在于能否进行对照和能否重复实验。对照越少,重复实验的能力越弱,我们对结果的把握就越小。

Social experiments are sometimes called experiments, but unless they have a “control” that followed a different path and hence can be studied as a natural experiment, they are not what we mean by experiment. A social experiment is simply the introduction and “trying out” of new social policies. For example, Oregon’s change in the financing of health insurance or Florida’s experiments with vouchers for financing education might be called social experiments. The distinction involves the ability to have a control and to be able to replicate the experiment. The less the control, and the less the ability to repeat the experiment, the less sure we are of the results.

方法论与社会科学

Methodology and the Social Sciences

由于社会科学实验难度极大,一些人坚持认为它并非科学。除了“科学”一词本身的声望之外,我们是否将社会研究称为科学并不重要。这仅仅是一个定义问题。如果我们所说的科学仅仅指自然科学,那么社会科学就不是真正的科学。如果我们所说的科学仅仅指所谓的精密科学,那么社会科学同样不包含在内。然而,如果我们广义地使用“科学”一词,

Because it is so difficult to experiment in social science, some people have insisted that it is not science. Except for the prestige carried by the word, whether we call the study of society a science is not important. It is merely a question of definition. If we mean by science the natural sciences only, then social science is not true science. If we mean by science only the so-called exact sciences, then again social science is not included. If, however, we use the term science broadly,

如果要涵盖所有运用科学方法扩展知识的系统性尝试,那么社会科学无疑必须被纳入科学的范畴。真正重要的是,社会科学家发现了许多重要的关系,这些关系足够可靠,能够极大地增进我们对社会行为的理解,并在处理某些社会问题时提供有用的指导。

to include all systematic attempts to expand knowledge by applying the scientific method, then social science definitely must be included in the scientific family. What is really important is that social scientists have discovered many significant relationships that are sufficiently dependable to add greatly to our understanding of social behavior and to serve as useful guides in dealing with some social problems.

关于社会科学中应使用何种方法论,一直存在很多争论。著名科学哲学家托马斯·库恩将范式定义为一种科学理论以及围绕该理论的信念核心。他认为,科学进步是通过范式转换实现的。在这种转换中,科学家们会长期抵制变化,坚持旧理论,即使越来越多的证据反对它,甚至另一个理论更符合数据。然而,最终,支持新理论的证据如此之多,以至于科学家们会突然改变想法。这个过程可以比作水龙头上形成一滴水的方式。它越来越大,直到掉下来。科学中的一个很好的例子是爱因斯坦的物理学相对论,它最初曾被嘲笑,但后来被采纳,因为它与艾萨克·牛顿爵士早期的引力理论相比,与更广泛的物理现象相一致。

There has been much debate about the correct methodology to be used in social science. Thomas Kuhn, a famous philosopher of science, defined a paradigm as a scientific theory and the core of beliefs that surround it. He argued that scientific progression occurs by paradigm shifts in which, for a long time, scientists will resist change and hold on to an old theory even as evidence mounts up against it, and even when another theory better fits the data. Eventually, however, the evidence in favor of the new theory is so great that suddenly scientists shift their thinking. The process can be likened to the way a drop of water forms on a faucet. It grows larger and larger until it falls. A good example in the sciences is Einsteins relativity theory in physics, which was initially scoffed at but was later adopted because it was consistent with a wider range of physical phenomena than was the earlier gravitational theory of Sir Isaac Newton.

社会科学家就库恩的范式转换理论是否适用于社会科学进行了深入的讨论。如果适用,它就为其他竞争理论提供了合法性。如果适用,那么普遍接受的理论就可以被认为是最佳理论。这个问题从未得到解决,但我们对理论相关性的理解却有所进步。

Social scientists have discussed at great length whether Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shift is appropriate for the social sciences. If it is, it gives legitimacy to competing theories. If it is not, then the generally accepted theory can be considered the best. The issue has never been resolved, but our understanding of the relevance of theories has advanced.

另一位著名的科学哲学家伊姆雷·拉卡托斯(Imre Lakatos)扩展了库恩的论点,他认为社会科学中通常存在许多相互竞争的理论,每种理论都通过相互竞争的研究项目或研究特定问题的科学家群体得到扩展。例如,心理学中有行为主义者和弗洛伊德学派。社会学中有功能主义者、冲突理论家和互动论者。我们可以在每门社会科学中列举不同的理论。每个研究项目的支持者都会争夺研究人员。在争夺追随者方面最成功的研究人员群体最有可能发展壮大。

Imre Lakatos, another tamous philosopher of science, has extended Kuhn’s arguments by saying that in social science there are generally many competing theories, each being extended through competing research programs, or groups of scientists working on a particular problem. For example, in psychology there are the behaviorists and the Freudians. In sociology there are functionalists, conflict theorists, and interactionists. We could cite different theories within each social science. Advocates of each of the research programs compete for researchers. The group of researchers most successful in competing for followers is the one most likely to grow.

其他科学哲学家则走得更远。保罗·费耶阿本德等一些人认为,所有方法论都有局限性,正确的方法论就是没有方法论。还有一些人认为,决定科学家信仰的是社会学问题,例如什么可能促进科学家的职业发展,而不是理论的真理性。

Other philosophers of science go further. Some, like Paul Feyerabend, argue that all methodology is limiting and that the correct methodology is no methodology. Still others argue that sociological issues, such as what is likely to advance a scientist’s career, rather than the truth of a theory, determine what the scientist believes.

在本书中,我们强调各种理论之间的竞争。我们希望借此展现社会科学中争议如何在知识发展中发挥重要作用。

In this book, we emphasize the competition among various theories. By doing so, we hope to show how, in social science, controversy plays an important role in the development of our knowledge.

理解科学方法的最佳途径或许是思考一些不符合科学方法的例子。例如,占星术或命理学。这些伪科学认为,通过分析星宿的排列或某些数字的位置,人们可以发现或预测会影响自身的事件。然而,这些发现的准确性或预测的可靠性从未得到令大多数社会科学家满意的证明。即使我们可能会翻看星座运势说:“啊哈!这似乎符合我的性格或经历”,但如果我们批判性地思考这些预测,我们常常会发现,这些陈述非常宽泛,以至于它们或多或少可以适用于各种各样的事件或可能性。这并不是说社会科学务必避免这种情况。例如,经济学经常会根据大型、高度复杂的数学模型(称为计量经济模型)做出预测,而其中一些预测对于指导方向的准确性甚至不比粗略估计高。

Probably the best way to understand the scientific method is to consider a couple of examples that do not follow the scientific method. For instance, consider astrology or numerology. These pseudo studies hold that by analyzing the alignment of the stars or the position of certain numbers, individuals can discover or predict events that will affect them. However, the accuracy of the discoveries or the reliability of the predictions has never been satisfactorily demonstrated to most social scientists. Even though we might turn to our horoscopes and say, “Aha! That seems to fit my character or my experience,” if we critically consider these predictions, often we see that the statements are so broad that they can be applied more or less appropriately to a wide range of happenings or possibilities. This is not to say that the social sciences always avoid that. Economics, for instance, often comes up with predictions from large, highly sophisticated mathematical models (called econometric models), and some of these predictions are no better for steering a course than back-of-the-envelope estimates.

优秀的社会科学家通常对任何主张都持不可知论(既不相信也不怀疑)立场,直到这些主张能够被反复检验。例如,以超心理学为例,该学派认为人们可以不依赖任何传统的交流方式传递某些信息。有一个专门研究超心理学问题的专业协会,例如通过标准感官以外的方式传递思想和情感的能力,以及与死者交流的能力。大多数社会科学家仍然不相信。他们认为,迄今为止,这些理论尚未得到充分证实。优秀的社会科学家在声明这些理论尚未得到检验时,并非武断。我们社会科学家可能过于固执于我们看待世界的方式,以至于无法考虑其他方式的可能性。谁能断言我们接受为结论性的测试就是“正确”的测试,或者我们的训练没有使测试产生偏见?

A good social scientist generally takes an agnostic (not believing but also not disbelieving) position about claims until they can be tested and retested. Consider, for example, parapsychology, which argues that people can transmit certain information independently of all conventional forms of communication. There is an entire professional association devoted to studying parapsychology issues, such as the ability to transfer thoughts and feeling by means other than the standard senses, and the ability to communicate with the dead. Most social scientists remain unconvinced. They hold that, to date, the theories have not been sufficiently demonstrated. In stating that these theories have not been tested, a good social scientist is not dogmatic. It is possible that we social scientists have become so tied to our way of looking at the world that we are unable to consider the possibilities of other ways. Who is to say that the tests we accept as conclusive are the “right” tests, or that our training has not biased the tests?

然而,最终我们必须对什么是可接受的测试、什么不是可接受的测试做出一个实际的判断,而社会科学家的方法论正是这种实际判断的体现。然而,它应该被呈现为一种实际的判断,而不是一套界定真假的最终标准。正因如此,优秀的社会科学家通常对一系列他们没有时间去研究的问题保持不可知论的态度。因此,从很多方面来说,学习社会科学并理解其方法,你将获得对自身认知能力局限性的清晰认识。

Ultimately, however, we must make a working judgment about what is and what is not an acceptable test, and social scientists’ methodology is an expression of that working judgment. It should, however, be presented as a working judgment, not as a set of definitive criteria of what is true and what is false. That is why, generally, good social scientists remain agnostic over a wide range of issues that they just do not have time to investigate. Thus, in many ways, what you will get out of a study of social science and an understanding of its methods is a healthy understanding of the limitations of your powers to know.

社会科学方法

The Methods of Social Science

科学方法的基本程序在社会科学中与在物理科学中同样重要。社会科学家必须仔细观察、分类和分析事实,进行概括,并尝试提出和检验假设来解释他们的概括。然而,他们的问题往往比物理科学家的问题更困难,原因有二。首先,社会科学家收集的事实——例如,关于不同民族文化的事实——有相似之处,但每个事实也可能在某些重要方面独一无二。这类事实难以分类和解释。此外,正如我们已经指出的,社会科学家能够得出的概括或规律可能不如物理科学家的概括或规律那么明确和确定。

The basic procedures of the scientific method are as important in social science as in physical science. Social scientists must observe carefully, classify and analyze their facts, make generalizations, and attempt to develop and test hypotheses to explain their generalizations. Their problem, however, is often more difficult than that of physical scientists for two reasons. First, facts gathered by the social scientist—for example, those concerning the cultures of different peoples—have similarities, but each fact may also be unique in significant respects. Facts of this kind are difficult to classify and interpret. Further, as we have already noted, the generalizations or laws that the social scientist can make are likely to be less definite and certain than those of the physical scientist.

“我是社会科学家,迈克尔。这意味着我无法解释电之类的东西,但如果你想了解人,我就是你要找的人。”

“I’m a social scientist, Michael. That means I can’t explain electricity or anything like that, hut if you ever want to know about people, I’m your man.”

© www.cartoonstock.com

© www.cartoonstock.com

第二个原因是,社会科学家通常不仅仅对科学真理感兴趣,他们更关心政策。正如我们之前所述,政策制定需要超越科学,将道德判断纳入分析,而道德判断的达成要困难得多。这通常使得社会科学政策比物理或自然科学政策更加困难。例如,在物理科学中,我们可能会研究物理定律——如果两个物体相撞,即使其中一个物体比另一个物体重得多,它们施加的力也会相等——这就是牛顿第三运动定律。这似乎违反直觉,但一旦理解了物理学用来理解物体间关系的框架,它就几乎显而易见了。没有人会对此提出异议。

The second reason is that social scientists are generally interested in more than just knowing scientific truths; they are interested in policy. As we stated earlier, policy requires going beyond science and incorporating moral judgments, which are much more difficult to come to agreement on, into the analysis. This often makes social science policy much more difficult than physical or natural science policy. For example, in the physical sciences we might study the laws of physics—if two objects crash the force exerted by either of the two objects will be equal even if one is much heavier than the other—this is Newtons Third Law of motion. It seems counterintuitive, but once one understands the framework physics uses for understanding relationships among objects, it is almost obvious. No one is going to argue with it.

现在考虑一下经济学家的供求规律——如果供给超过需求,就会有价格上涨的压力。一旦理解了经济学家的框架,这条规律就显而易见了。但它却不那么容易被接受。通常人们不希望价格上涨,并建立了阻止价格上涨的机构,或实施阻止价格上涨的政策。这可以做到,但会产生后果。经济学家作为科学家的职责不是评判抑制价格的政策是好是坏。相反,他们作为科学家的角色是解释——如果你这样做,后果如下。他们作为政策顾问的角色则有所不同,也更为复杂。要判断一项抑制价格的政策是否是好的政策,需要引入政策目标,而政策目标是由道德哲学(社会研究的规范分支)决定的。政策问题并非由科学来解决。

Now consider economists’ law of supply and demand—that if supply exceeds demand, there will be pressures for the price to rise. This law is also obvious once one understands economists’ framework. But it is not so easily accepted. Often people don’t want the price to rise, and have established institutions to prevent it from doing so, or to implement policy that prevents the rise. That can be done, but it will have consequences, and economists’ job as scientists is not to say that policy to hold down price is good or bad. Instead, their role as scientists is to explain—here are the consequences if you do that. Their role as policy advisors is different, and more complex. To decide whether a policy to hold down price is good policy requires an introduction of goals of policy which is determined in moral philosophy—the normative branch of social studies. The policy issue is not resolved by science.

当物理科学与政策紧密联系时,物理学家也会像社会科学一样陷入冲突和争论。以气候变化和全球变暖为例。物理学家一致认为全球变暖正在发生,而最可能的原因是人类对化石燃料的使用。这是一个科学领域的问题。如何应对——其政策含义——则需要跳出科学的桎梏,将道德哲学融入分析之中。我们应该关注全球变暖吗?谁应该改变自己的行为来阻止它?我们应该在什么时间范围内做出回应?这些以及数百个类似的问题都没有简单的答案,但如果科学家要提供政策指导,就必须回答这些问题。科学并不处理这些问题。回答这些问题的哲学方式是为了天堂而辩论——让各方聚集在一起,本着相互接受的精神,诚实地辩论这个问题。

When the physical sciences become closely tied to policy, physical scientists also find that they are mired in conflict and debate just like the social sciences. Consider climate change and global warming. Physical scientists are agreed that global warming is occurring and that the most likely cause is humans’ use of fossil fuel. That is a question in the realm of science. What to do about it—the policy implications—requires going out of science and integrating moral philosophy into the analysis. Should we care about global warming? Who should change their actions to stop it? What is the time frame within which we should respond? These and hundreds of similar questions have no easy answer, but they have to be answered if scientists are to provide policy guidance. Science does not deal with such questions. The philosophical way of answering those questions is argumentation for the sake of heaven—having all sides come together to honestly debate the issue in a spirit of mutual acceptance.

社会科学家的两种角色融合常常会引发一些问题。例如,气候变化科学家通常对政策持有强烈的观点,这本身就存在问题,因为科学和政策可能会交织在一起。当科学家对某个政策问题持有强烈的观点时,会导致科学结论的客观性丧失(或者至少在他人看来科学家的客观性会丧失)。这些政策观点是否会影响科学家对科学证据的解读,从而偏向于其政策结论?正如人们很难在评判自己的孩子与他人的孩子时保持中立一样,科学家也很难判断与自己认为必要的政策相关的经验证据。

The blending of the two roles of a social scientist often leads to difficulties. For example, climate change scientists often have strong views about policy, which is a problem because the science and the policy can become intertwined. When a scientist takes a strong view on a policy question, it leads to a loss of objectivity (or at least in others’ perceptions of the scientist’s objectivity) of the scientific conclusions. Are the policy views influencing his or her interpretation of the scientific evidence in such a way as to favor his or her policy conclusion. Just as one has a difficult time remaining neutral when judging one’s own children relative to others, so too does a scientist have a difficult time judging empirical evidence that relates to a policy he or she believes is necessary.

由于气候科学领域科学与政策的交织,这场争论在科学和政策层面都变得有害。双方并非为了天堂而争论,而是为了赢得争论、争取观点。正如社会科学领域许多政策辩论变得有害一样,这种现象也同样存在。当政策与科学交织时,社会科学领域也常常存在同样的问题。为了避免这种有害影响,重要的是将科学与政策分开。对于科学家而言,作为科学家,他们不应该持有任何政策观点;即使持有政策观点,也应该确保科研团队中还有其他持不同政策观点的科学家,以保持他们的诚实。一位优秀的社会科学家往往会让各方都感到愤怒。

Because of the blending of science and policy in climate science, the debate has become toxic in both the science and the policy, with both sides not arguing for the sake of heaven, but arguing for the sake of winning and making points, in the same way that many policy debates in social science have become toxic. The same type of problem often exists in social sciences when policy and science become blended. To avoid that toxicity it is important to separate science and policy, and for scientists, in their role as scientists, to have no policy view, or when they have a policy view, to be sure that they have other scientists with opposing policy views on their scientific research team to keep them honest. Often a good social scientist makes all sides mad at him or her.

社会科学方法的一个例子

An Example of the Social Science Method

让我们举一个运用社会科学方法的例子——约瑟夫·霍兹 (Joseph Hotz) 对青少年怀孕影响的研究。首先,他研究了所有关于青少年怀孕的著作。然后,他提出了以下假设:青少年怀孕会导致母亲们的经济和社会状况比没有怀孕的情况下更糟。为了检验这个假设,他使用了多年来追踪青少年女性生活所收集的数据。从中,他抽取了两组人——一组怀孕并生下孩子的青少年,另一组怀孕但流产的青少年。然后,他比较了她们三十五岁左右时的经济和社会地位。如果青少年怀孕导致母亲的状况恶化,那么生下孩子的青少年应该比流产的青少年状况更糟。但事实并非如此。他发现这两组人之间没有显著差异:她们都是低收入者,严重依赖社会福利,并且完成了相同年限的教育。最初的假设是错误的。青少年怀孕并没有使母亲的状况变得更糟;这只不过是一系列更大问题的症状而已。这些问题如此严重,以至于母亲是否在十几岁时生育孩子对她们的经济和社会地位几乎没有影响。

Let’s take an example of the use of the social science method—Joseph Hotz’s study of the implications of teen pregnancy. First, he studied all the writing on teen pregnancy. Then he set up the following hypothesis: Teen motherhood causes the mothers to be economically and socially worse off than they otherwise would have been. To test this hypothesis, he used data that had been collected over many years tracking the lives of teenage women. From that he extracted two groups—a set of teenagers who had become pregnant and borne the child and a set of teenagers who had become pregnant but had miscarried. He then compared their economic and social positions when they were in their mid-thirties. If teen motherhood caused the mother to be worse off, then the teens who had borne their babies should have been in a worse position than those who miscarried. They weren’t. He found no significant difference between the two groups: Both were low-income, significantly dependent on welfare benefits, and had completed the same number of years of school. The initial hypothesis was false. Teen pregnancy did not make mothers worse off; it was simply a symptom of a larger set of problems. This larger set of problems was so severe that whether mothers had borne a child in their teens made little difference to their economic and social positions.

霍茨的研究结果发表之际,政府正耗资巨大地开展反对青少年母亲的运动,他的结论在自由派和保守派中均不受欢迎。自由派不喜欢这些结论,因为他的研究表明,自由派制定的许多计划生育建议和性教育对改善这些女性的生活几乎没有帮助。保守派不喜欢这些结论,因为他的研究暗示,更实质性的要改善这些女性的生活并打破贫困的恶性循环,需要的改变不仅仅是简单地消除青少年母亲现象。但良好的社会科学方法论并非为了取悦任何人——而是为了理解社会问题。

Hotz’s findings were published as the government was conducting a costly campaign against teen motherhood, and his conclusions were unpopular with both liberals and conservatives. Liberals did not like them because his study suggested that much of the family planning advice and sex education developed by liberals was of little help in improving these women’s lives. Conservatives did not like them because his study implied that more substantive changes than simply eliminating teen motherhood were needed to improve these women’s lives and break the cycle of poverty. But good social science methodology is not about pleasing anybody—it is about understanding social issues and social problems.

尽管霍兹的实验并非完全受控,但它在社会科学领域已是最接近受控的实验了。实验选取了相似的群体进行比较,因此没有明显的理由解释为什么这两个群体会存在差异。

Although Hotz’s experiment was not fully controlled, it was as close as one could come to a controlled experiment in the social sciences. It selected similar groups to compare in such a way that no obvious reason existed as to why these two groups should differ.

其他社会科学方法

Other Social Science Methods

除了实验方法外,社会科学家还使用各种不同的方法,包括历史方法、案例方法以及比较和跨文化方法。

In addition to the experimental method, social scientists use a variety of different methods. These include the historical method, the case method, and the comparative and cross-cultural methods.

历史方法由于大多数社会发展(例如美国政府)都具有独有的特征,因此,为了尽可能全面地理解它们,社会科学家必须在很大程度上依赖于对其历史背景的研究。我们永远无法完全理解任何历史情况是如何发生的,因为我们的历史知识是有限的,而且我们越往前追溯,其原因就越复杂和不确定。然而,我们可以通过运用历史方法——追溯过去那些似乎对社会情况的形成有直接重要性的主要发展——来使历史事件和当前的社会形势变得更容易理解。为了追溯这些过去的发展,历史学家会使用许多与其他社会科学家相同的方法,例如收集出生和结婚证明并对这些数据进行分类。

The Historical Method Because most social developments—such as the government of the United States—have unique characteristics, in order to understand them as fully as possible the social scientist must rely heavily on a study of their historical background. We can never understand completely how any historical situation came to exist, because there are limits to our historical knowledge and causes become increasingly complex and uncertain as we trace them further into the past. We can, however, make both historical events and present social situations much more intelligible by using the historical method—tracing the principal past developments that seem to have been directly significant in bringing about a social situation. To trace these past developments, a historian will use many of the same methods as other social scientists, such as collecting birth and marriage certificates and classifying those data.

众所周知,历史从来不会真正重演。然而,现在和过去的情况往往有着惊人的相似之处,以至于了解过去可以让我们洞悉当前形势,有时甚至洞察未来趋势。

It has been noted that history never really repeats itself. Nevertheless, present and past situations often have such striking similarities that a knowledge of the past can give us insights into present situations and sometimes into future trends.

案例法社会研究方法论的作者们对案例法投入了大量的关注——它的特点、变化、用途、优势和局限性。这里我们只描述它的基本性质。案例法涉及对特定问题或问题情境进行详细的考察和分析。这可以是针对单个人的案例研究,例如心理学家对其来访者的研究;也可以是针对单个地区或城镇的案例研究,例如社会学家对城镇变化原因的研究;甚至可以是针对整个国家的研究,例如经济学家对不同国家进行比较的研究。

The Case Method Writers on the methodology of social research have devoted a great deal of attention to the case method—its characteristics, its variations, the uses it can serve, its advantages, and its limitations. Here we only describe its basic nature. The case method involves making a detailed examination and analysis of a particular issue or problem situation. This can involve a case study of a single person, such as that by a psychologist of his or her client; a single area or town, such as a sociologist’s study of why a town changes; or even a study of whole countries, such as an economist’s study involving comparisons of various countries.

案例研究的目的可以在于探索如何在特定问题情境中实现理想的改变:例如,找到升级或重建贫民窟的最有效方法。更常见的是,案例研究的主要目的是阐明社会中存在的许多类似情况。希望通过对一个或几个案例的理解,能够阐明其他案例,从而有助于解决它们所代表的社会问题。所选案例应具有其所代表群体的典型性。

A case study can be intended to discover how to bring about desirable changes in a particular problem situation: for example, to find the most effective ways of upgrading or rehabilitating a slum area. More often, the chief purpose of a case study is to throw light on many similar situations that exist in a society. The hope is that an understanding of one or a few cases will illuminate the others and thus aid in solving the social problems they present. The case or cases selected should be typical of the group they purport to represent.

前述要求可能会限制案例方法的实用性。假设我们想研究整个美国社会的阶级结构。显然,选择美国不同地区几个相对较小且孤立的城市作为案例会更容易。但这些案例能否真实地展现美国的整体情况值得怀疑,因为如今我们很大一部分人生活在大都市地区,那里的阶级结构可能比较小且孤立的社区复杂得多。然而,研究和详细描述这样一个地区的阶级结构可能极其困难且成本高昂,因此并不切实际。

The preceding requirement can be a limiting factor in the usefulness of the case method. Suppose we wanted to make a study of the class structure of US society as a whole. Obviously, it would be easier to select as cases for study several relatively small and isolated cities in various sections of the country. But it is questionable whether these would give us a true picture of the country as a whole, because today a great proportion of our people lives in large metropolitan areas where the class structure is likely to be much more complex than in smaller and more isolated communities. However, to study and describe in detail the class structure of such an area may be prohibitively difficult and expensive, and therefore impractical.

比较与跨文化研究方法过去,人们常常运用比较方法,希望发现人类制度发展中的演化序列,即具有普遍性的社会发展或进步模式。例如,人们有时假设政府制度的发展存在明确的阶段,并认为可以通过将处于某一发展水平的社会与处于不同发展水平的其他社会进行比较来发现这些阶段。如今,这种试图寻找适用于所有社会的社会演化模式的尝试已基本被摒弃。

The Comparative and Cross-Cultural Methods The comparative method was formerly often employed in the hope of discovering evolutionary sequences in the development of human institutions—that is, patterns of social development or progress that would be universal. For example, it was sometimes assumed that definite stages existed in the development of governmental institutions, and it was thought that these stages could be discovered by comparing a society at one level of development with some other society at a different level. Today, this attempt to find patterns of social evolution that can be applied to all societies has been largely abandoned.

然而,通过所谓的跨文化方法,不同社会之间的比较在人类学研究中仍然发挥着重要作用。这种方法旨在对多个社会的文化模式进行详细研究,以便进行比较。他们的人民以不同的方式满足类似的需求。这些研究有时会发现,即使彼此之间似乎没有直接或间接的接触,相距甚远的民族的文化特征也存在惊人的相似性。

Comparison of different societies, however, still plays an important role in anthropological studies through what is called the cross-cultural method. This method consists of making detailed stu dies of the cultural patterns of a number of societies for the purpose of comparing the different ways in which their people meet similar needs. These studies sometimes show surprising similarities in the cultural traits of widely separated peoples who appear to have had no direct or indirect contacts with one another.

比较不同社会的特征会遇到问题。有时,很难决定两个或多个社会是独立的还是应视为一个整体。或者考虑一下定义:如果我们比较不同社会中的家庭制度,我们必须对家庭进行足够广泛的定义以涵盖文化差异,但又要足够具体以使比较有意义。社会学家对家庭的定义并不总是一致。同样,如果我们比较城市工业社会中的失业率,我们必须对失业的含义达成一致。例如,在 20 世纪 80 年代初,按照美国标准计算,墨西哥的失业率约为 30%。然而,墨西哥经济学家认为这个数字毫无意义,因为墨西哥的工作习惯和文化与美国不同。他们说,被衡量为失业的大部分实际上是在家工作而不是在市场上赚钱的个人。因此,尽管他们有非市场工作,但他们被算作失业者。

Comparison of the characteristics of different societies involves problems. At times, it is difficult to decide whether two or more societies are independent or should be treated as one. Or consider definitions: If we are comparing the family institution in different societies, we must define family broadly enough to cover cultural variations, yet specifically enough to make comparisons meaningful. Sociologists do not always agree on just what a family is. Again, if we are comparing unemployment in urban-industrial societies, we must agree on what we mean by unemployment. For example, in the early 1980s, the unemployment rate in Mexico, computed by US standards, was approximately 30 percent. Mexican economists, however, argued that this figure was meaningless because Mexican work habits and culture were different from those in the United States. Much of what was measured as unemployment, they said, was actually individuals working at home and not earning money in the marketplace. Thus, although they had nonmarket jobs, they had been counted as unemployed.

社会科学中的受过教育的常识

Educated Common Sense in the Social Sciences

进行任何研究时,或许要记住的最重要的一课就是,你应该运用所谓的“有根据的常识”。要明白常识和“有根据的常识”之间的区别,请思考这个问题:地球绕着太阳转,还是太阳绕着地球转?未经教育的常识告诉我们,太阳绕着地球转,而这个常识性结论在整个中世纪逐渐融入社会以及社会对自身的看法。不相信的话就是异端邪说。1540 年,哥白尼试图将这种常识与古希腊人对天体的观察结果相吻合。在进行这项任务的过程中,他发现,只有假设地球绕着太阳转,数据才能与理论很好地吻合。他的常识是一种“有根据的常识”——基于观察和现有最佳信息的理性思考。正是这种“有根据的常识”最终导致了科学方法的出现。由于专业化使我们关注的问题越来越狭窄,我们必须牢记,科学分析使我们只关注问题的一部分,我们还必须运用我们所学到的常识来合理地解释结果。

Probably the most important lesson to remember when conducting any research is that you should use what might be called an educated common sense. To see the difference between common sense and educated common sense, consider the problem: Does the earth circle the sun or does the sun circle the earth? Uneducated common sense tells us that the sun circles the earth, and that common sense conclusion became built into society and society’s view of itself throughout the Middle Ages. To believe otherwise was heresy. In 1540, Copernicus tried to fit that common sense view with observations that classical Greeks had made of the heavens. As he went about this task, he discovered that he could get a good fit of the data with the theory only if he assumed the earth moved around the sun. His was an educated common sense— rational thought based on observation and the best information available. It was that kind of educated common sense that ultimately led to the scientific method. As specialization makes us focus on narrower and narrower issues, it is important to keep in the back of our minds that scientific analysis has made us look at only part of the problem and that we must also use our educated common sense to interpret the results reasonably.

统计数据的使用

The Use of Statistics

只要有可能,社会科学家就会依赖定量数据(可以简化为数字的数据),但定量数据通常难以获得,因此社会科学家必须依赖定性数据,例如访谈或文献中信息的启发式摘要。使用定性数据时,从数据中得出具体推论要困难得多,因为发现的“事实”取决于如何解释定性数据。部分克服此类“解释问题”的一种方法是“德尔菲法”,即让该领域的另一位专家审查你的解释,然后你根据自己的判断修改解释,并解释你接受或拒绝建议修改的理由。另一种方法是将定性数据转化为定量数据,为任何缺失的定量数据创建“代理”(替代),尽管这通常只是隐藏了解释问题,而不是消除它们。

Whenever possible, social scientists rely on quantitative data—data that can be reduced to numbers—but often quantitative data are not available, so social scientists must rely on qualitative data such as interviews or heuristic summaries of information in the literature. When using qualitative data, it is much more difficult to draw specific inferences from the data, because the “facts” one finds depend on how one interprets the qualitative data. One way to partially overcome such “interpretive problems” is the “Delphi method” in which another specialist in the field reviews your interpretation and then you modify your interpretation in response if you see fit, explaining your reasons for accepting or rejecting the suggested modifications. Another way is to translate the qualitative data into quantitative data, creating “proxies” (stand-ins) for any missing quantitative data, although that often simply hides the interpretative issues rather than eliminating them.

如果可以获得定量数据,社会科学家就会依靠统计分析——以数字形式收集并分类的信息——来获取理解社会关系和过程所需的信息。统计数据无法让我们直接衡量诸如良好公民意识、幸福感或福利等基本社会价值观,但它们有助于衡量构成社会生活基础的其他因素,例如一个国家的人口规模,或收入低于我们设定的体面健康生活最低标准的家庭数量。统计关系也能让我们深入了解社会问题。如果我们发现,青少年拘留中心中来自破碎家庭的男性比例远高于总体人口中来自破碎家庭的男性比例,这表明破碎家庭可能是导致青少年犯罪的一个重要因素。但对统计数据的解读必须始终谨慎,因为很容易从中得出它们无法佐证的结论。此外,有时我们也可能操纵统计数据,使它们看起来像是我们想要的那样。

If quantitative data are available, social scientists rely on statistical analysis—information in numerical form that has been assembled and classified—to provide the social scientist with the information needed to understand social relationships and processes. Statistics do not enable us to measure directly such basic social values as good citizenship, happiness, or welfare, but they are useful in measuring other factors that underlie social life, such as the size of the population of a country, or the number of families whose incomes fall below some level that we set as the minimum for decent and healthful living. Statistical relationships also give us insights into social problems. If we find that the proportion of males in juvenile detention centers who come from broken homes is substantially greater than the proportion of males in the population at large who come from such homes, this suggests that broken homes may be an important factor contributing to juvenile delinquency. But statistics must always be interpreted with care, for it can be easy to read into them conclusions they do not justify. Also, it is sometimes possible to manipulate them so that they appear to show what we want them to show.

虽然统计数据衡量的是社会活动的结果并揭示趋势,但它们还有其他实用功能:检验理论和发现关系。例如,相关性是指两组数据之间的关系。数据组之间的高度正相关性意味着,如果一组数据中的某个元素上升,那么另一组数据中对应的元素也可能上升。其他统计数据则决定了我们对某种关系的确定程度。我们不讨论这些统计数据,因为社会科学入门课程并非学习这些统计数据的地方,但它可以让你了解此类检验关系的技术的存在,并且它们或许值得你在未来某个时候学习。

Although statistics measure the results of social activity and highlight trends, they have other useful functions: testing theories and discovering relationships. For example, correlation is the relationship between two sets of data. A high positive correlation between sets of data means that if an element in one set rises, its corresponding element in the other set is also likely to rise. Other statistics determine how sure we are of a relationship. We do not discuss these statistics because an introductory social science course is not the place to learn them, but it is the place to learn that such techniques of testing relationships exist, and they may be worth your while to study at some point in the future.

如果我们要使用统计数据,就必须有数据。数据是描述事件、发生或情况的原始数字。社会科学家的数据来自于对某一特定事件的所有发生次数的测量和统计。例如,我们可能会发现,“2022 年发生了x起谋杀案,y 起自杀案。”获取数据的一种方法是进行调查,即通过问卷或访谈从个人或机构收集数据的方法。例如,我们可以进行一项调查,在调查中,选定的人会就他们的收入、他们对某些问题的看法或他们打算投票给的政治候选人等问题进行询问或民意调查。统计数据可以告诉我们,必须调查群体中多大的一部分人,我们才能合理地确定结果将反映整个群体的观点。这类技术在盖洛普或哈里斯民意调查等调查中被广泛使用。

If we are going to use statistics, we must have data. Data are the raw numbers describing an event, occurrence, or situation. Social scientists’ data come from measuring and counting all occurrences of a particular happening. For example, we might find, “In 2022, there were x number of murders and y number of suicides.” One way to get data is to conduct a survey, a method whereby data are collected from individuals or institutions by means of questionnaires or interviews. For instance, we might conduct a survey in which selected people are questioned or polled on such matters as their incomes, their beliefs on certain issues, or the political candidate for whom they intend to vote. Statistics can tell us how large a portion of a group must be surveyed before we can be reasona bly sure that the results will reflect the views of the entire group. Such techniques are used extensively in surveys such as the Gallup or Harris public opinion polls.

计算机极大地促进了统计数据的应用,并因此大大扩展了其应用范围。计算机使得快速、分析地记录、整理和重新整理海量信息成为可能。如今,任何拥有计算机或其他互联网接入方式的人都可以获取海量数据和其他资源。

The use of statistics has been greatly facilitated, and therefore greatly expanded, by the computer. The computer has made it possible to record, arrange, and rearrange voluminous information quickly and analytically. Today, enormous amounts of data and other resources are available to anyone with a computer or other access to the Internet.

随着社会数据的扩展和计算能力的大幅提升,社会科学家越来越有可能仅在数据中寻找关系,而不是受理论的指导。社会科学家使用高度复杂的统计技术分析数据,寻找模式。在找到模式后,他们会将模式与理论进行匹配。例如,社会科学家史蒂芬·莱维特和约翰·多诺霍搜索了数据,发现美国堕胎权法案的通过与后期犯罪率的下降之间存在关联。基于这一证据,他们认为,由于堕胎减少了不想要的孩子的数量,那些出生的孩子会得到更多的指导,并且使堕胎合法化的法律,而不是执法的任何变化或入狱囚犯数量的增加,才是美国在 20 世纪 90 年代犯罪率下降的主要原因。

With the expansion of social data and the large increase in computing power, it is increasingly possible for social scientists to look for relationships in the data alone, rather than to be guided in that search by theories. Using highly sophisticated statistical techniques, social scientists analyze data, looking for patterns. After they find a pattern, they fit that pattern to a theory. For example, social scientists Stephen Levitt and John Donohue searched the data and found a relationship between the passage of the abortion rights law in the United States and a decrease in crime in later periods. Based on this evidence, they argued that because abortion reduced the number of unwanted children, those children who were born had more guidance, and that it was the law making abortion legal, not any change in law enforcement or increase in the number of inmates jailed, that was mostly responsible for the decrease in crime rates that the United States experienced in the 1990s.

社会科学家在做出此类断言时应格外小心,不要将相关性(两个变量的同时变动)与因果关系(一个变量的变化会导致另一个变量的变化)混为一谈。以下示例可以看出其中的区别。当预计会下雨时,会有更多人带伞,因此雨伞的使用和下雨是相关的。但人们带伞这一事实并不会导致下雨,或者说我们大多数人是这么认为的。重要的是要记住,统计数据并不能提供所有答案。例如,在冠状病毒大流行中,科学家试图根据科学来指导政策,但由于这样做所需的数据在很大程度上是无法获得的,他们提供的科学指导是有限的。通常,我们根本没有提供无可争辩的指导所需的数据。

Whenever making such claims, social scientists should be very careful not to contuse correlation—the simultaneous movement of two variables—with causation—in which change in one variable brings about change in the other variable. The difference can be seen in the following example. When it is expected to rain, more people carry umbrellas, so umbrella usage and rain are correlated. But the fact that people carry umbrellas does not cause it to rain, or so most of us believe. It is important to remember that statistics don’t provide all the answers. For example, in the coronavirus pandemic, scientists attempted to guide policy based on science, but because the data necessary to do so were in large part unavailable, the scientific guidance they provided was limited. Often, we simply don’t have the data needed for indisputable guidance.

跨学科方法

The Interdisciplinary Approach

现代工业社会及其问题日益复杂,由于如今没有人能够精通所有社会科学,因此人们越来越重视采用跨学科方法解决许多社会问题。跨学科方法意味着一组具有不同专业的社会科学家将共同研究某个特定问题,但并非小组中的任何一个人都能完全理解该问题的所有方面。对于某些问题,例如与污染相关的问题,可能需要聘请物理学家、地质学家和工程师。但在应对所有这些问题时,对受过良好教育、对问题和相互关系有广泛了解的人的需求——他们理解统一的社会科学的必要性——正变得越来越明显。

Modern industrial societies and their problems are becoming increasingly complex, and because no one person today can master all the social sciences, growing emphasis is placed on the interdisciplinary approach to many social problems. Tire interdisciplinary approach means that a group of social scientists with different specialties will work together on a particular problem, not all aspects of which any one of the group fully understands. For some problems, such as those surrounding pollution, it may be necessary to call in, say, a physical scientist, a geologist, and an engineer. But in facing all of these problems, the need for educated people who have a broad sense of problems and interrelationships—who understand the need for a unified social science—is becoming more and more evident.

虽然很少有社会关系能够归结为精确不变的规律,但在条件非常相似的情况下,人类在大型群体中的行为却非常相似。因此,我们有理由相信,通过系统的研究,我们能够极大地加深我们对人类社会的本质和发展的理解,并希望跨学科方法本身所培养的态度以及它所引导我们的知识最终能够导致不同群体和国家之间更大的宽容与合作。

Though few social relationships can be reduced to exact and invariable laws, human beings in large groups everywhere show great likenesses of behavior when conditions are really similar. Thus, there is reason to believe that we can, through systematic study and research, greatly increase our understanding of the nature and development of human societies, and to hope that the attitudes fostered by the interdisciplinary approach itself and the knowledge to which it leads us can ultimately result in greater tolerance and cooperation among diverse groups and among nations.

公正的旁观者和无知之幕

The impartial Spectator and the Veil of ignorance

正如我之前所讨论的,要从理解社会系统(社会科学作为一门科学的目标)转向指导社会政策,社会科学家需要在分析中融入价值观——不是他或她自己的价值观,而是他所建议的群体或个人的价值观。例如,在为社会提供建议时,人们会运用“社会目标”,并探索如何以符合社会价值观的方式实现这些目标。科学并不能决定这些价值观或目标,道德哲学才是。我们将继续在政策讨论中运用公正的旁观者工具以及相关的“无知之幕”。例如,对许多人来说,税收收入的大部分应该来自富人,这似乎是显而易见的。但从一个把所有时间都花在工作上,而其他人则在玩乐的富人的角度来看,她会如何看待自己缴纳更多的税款?大多数人会希望在决定谁应该纳税以及什么才是公平的纳税方式时,给予她可能的观点——她缴纳更多的税款是不合适的——一定的权重。

As I discussed earlier, to move from an understanding of the social system—the goal of social science as a science—to guidance on social policy, social scientists need to add values to the analysis—not his or her values, but the values of the group or person he is advising. For example, in advising a society, one uses “society’s goals” and explores how to achieve those goals in a way that is consistent with society’s values. Science does not determine those values or goals, moral philosophy does. Tire impartial spectator tool, and the related veil of ignorance, are tools that we will be continually reaching back to in our policy discussions. For example, to many it seems obvious that most tax revenue should come from the rich. But how about from the perspective of a rich person who spent all her time working, while others played? What will she think of her paying more? Most will want to give her likely view—that it would be improper for her to pay more in tax—some weight in the decision of who should pay taxes, and what is fair.

在鼓励为天堂而争论的环境中公开、诚实地讨论这些问题,是就社会目标达成一致的唯一途径,这就是为什么这种讨论是社会政策的必要组成部分。

Discussing such issues openly and honestly in an environment that encourages argumentation for the sake of heaven is about the only way to come to an agreement on what is meant by social goals, which is why that discussion is a necessary part of social policy.

价值观、术语和修辞

Values, Terminology, and Rhetoric

本章以爱因斯坦的一句话开篇:“理论应该尽可能简单,但不应过于简单。” 同样的话也适用于思想及其表达。不幸的是,专家们总是倾向于使用一些并不简单的术语,这些术语往往会使问题变得模糊,而不是清晰。许多社会科学教师曾写信给我们介绍这本书(这些教师在写信的过程中,也扮演了

This chapter began with a quotation from Albert Einstein, who said, “theories should be as simple as possible, but not more so.” The same thing could be said about ideas and the expression of those ideas. Unfortunately, specialists have an incentive to develop a terminology that is anything but simple and that often obscures rather than clarifies. One of the many social science teachers who has written us about this book (and in doing so, these teachers have played

在其发展中扮演重要角色)描述了她参加的一次历史会议,会上“我们受到了如此好的款待,

an important role in its development) described a history conference she attended where “we were treated to such goodies” as

虽然她在转录会议记录时可能略显矫揉造作,但她的观点很有道理。她当时正在参加一个关于她专业的会议,但她却听不懂他们在说什么。这种情况经常发生,不仅发生在学生身上,也发生在老师身上。虽然许多专家的发言中可能蕴含着宝贵的观点,但如果我们无法理解,或者不得不花费数小时翻译,就无法从中获益。

Although she may have used a bit of literary license in transcribing the conference proceedings, her point is well taken. She was attending a conference on her specialty; yet she did not understand what was being said. It happens all the time, not only to students, but to teachers as well. Although there may be valuable ideas in what many specialists have to say, we can’t profit from them if we can’t understand them, or if we must spend hours translating them.

CW·米尔斯在其精彩著作《社会学的想象力》中明确阐述了这一点。他认为,在许多社会科学领域,“高级理论”充斥着各种术语。例如,他解读了社会学家塔尔科特·帕森斯的术语:他将其精简了80%到90%,同时使其更易于理解。米尔斯并非在说帕森斯的洞见不够深刻;相反,米尔斯认为帕森斯是一位才华横溢的社会学家。只是帕森斯的语言掩盖了他精辟的见解。

In his wonderful book The Sociological Imagination, C. W. Mills made precisely this point. He argued that in many social sciences, “high theory” is top-heavy with jargon. As an example, he interpreted sociologist Talcott Parsons’s terminology: He reduced it by 80 to 90 percent and at the same time made it more intelligible. Mills was not making the point that Parsons’s insights were not good ones; to the contrary, Mills believed that Parsons was a brilliant sociologist. But Parsons’s language obscured his brilliant ideas.

语言的另一个特点是它体现了价值判断,并保留了看待问题的方式。不可能做到完全客观;套用爱因斯坦的话来说,目标是尽可能客观,但不能过于客观。优秀的社会科学家认识到客观性的局限性,并始终乐于用不同的表达方式和新的视角来应对现实。

Another characteristic or language is that it embodies value judgments and preserves ways of looking at problems. There is no way to be completely objective; to paraphrase Einstein, the goal is to be as objective as possible but not more so. A good social scientist recognizes the limits of objectivity and is always open to dealing with reality by alternative modes of expression and new ways of looking at issues.

结论

Conclusion

如果本章成功地实现了其预期目的,它应该能让你理解成为一名社会科学家的意义。正如你所见,社会科学正在不断发展:它们相互作用,并在人文学科、自然科学和各个社会科学之间游走,这取决于研究它们的人员。它们是流动的,而非静止的,这种流动性会给任何试图对它们进行过于固定的定义的人带来麻烦。

If this chapter has succeed ed in its intended purpose, it should have given you a sense of what it means to be a social scientist. As you saw, the social sciences are evolving: They interact and they move among the humanities, the natural sciences, and the individual social sciences, depending on who is working with them. They are fluid, not static, and that fluidity will present problems to anyone who attempts too fixed a definition of any of them.

能够处理流动的定义,能够毫不畏缩地识别阴影和物体,这是优秀社会科学家所表现出的重要特征——如果你学会了这种特征,那么在你学习本书和玩人生游戏时,它将对你大有裨益。

The ability to handle the fluid definitions, to recognize the shadows as well as the objects without flinching, is an important characteristic that good social scientists exhibit—one which, if learned, will serve you well as you study this book and play the game of life.

学习复习

Study and Review

要点

Keypoints

  • 社会科学是我们对人类社会的性质、发展和运作的认识的名称。
  • Social science is the name given to our knowledge about the nature, growth, and functioning of human society.
  • 科学方法是一套关于如何制定规则的规则。
  • The scientific method is a set of rules about how to establish rules.
  • 优秀的社会科学家一般会对某些主张采取观望态度,直到它们经过反复检验。
  • A good social scientist generally takes a wait-andsee position about claims until they are tested and retested.
  • 解决社会科学问题的合理方法是观察、定义问题、回顾文献、进一步观察、建立理论框架并提出假设、选择研究设计、收集必要的数据、分析结果并得出结论。
  • A reasonable approach to a problem in social science is to observe, define the problem, review the literature, observe some more, develop a theoretical framework and formulate a hypothesis, choose the research design, collect the necessary data, analyze the results, and draw conclusions.
  • 社会科学的三种典型方法是历史方法、案例方法和比较方法。
  • Three typical methods in social science are the historical method, the case method, and the comparative method.
  • 在社会科学中运用有根据的常识非常重要。
  • It is important to use educated common sense in the social sciences.
  • 优秀的社会科学家总是愿意用新的方式看待问题。
  • A good social scientist is always open to new ways of looking at issues.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 为天而论证(4)
  • argumentation for the sake of heaven (4)
  • 人类学(6)
  • anthropology (6)
  • 生物科学(3)
  • biological science (3)
  • 案例方法(14)
  • case method (14)
  • 因果关系(16)
  • causation (16)
  • 认知科学(4)
  • cognitive science (4)
  • 比较法(14)
  • comparative method (14)
  • 相关性(16)
  • correlation (16)
  • 跨文化方法(14)
  • cross-cultural method (14)
  • 经济学(10)
  • economics (10)
  • 受过教育的常识(15)
  • educated common sense (15)
  • 实验方法(9)
  • experimental method (9)
  • 地理(81)
  • geography (81)
  • 历史方法(14)
  • historical method (14)
  • 历史(000)
  • history (000)
  • 人文学科(4)
  • humanities (4)
  • 公正的旁观者工具 (4)
  • impartial spectator tool (4)
  • 跨学科方法(16)
  • interdisciplinary approach (16)
  • 自然科学(3)
  • natural science (3)
  • 范式(11)
  • paradigm (11)
  • 实践智慧 (3)
  • phronesis (3)
  • 政治学(5)
  • political science (5)
  • 心理学(4)
  • psychology (4)
  • 研究项目(11)
  • research program (11)
  • 科学知识(3)
  • scientific knowledge (3)
  • 科学方法(8)
  • scientific method (8)
  • 社会科学(2)
  • social science (2)
  • 社会学(11)
  • sociology (11)
  • 统计分析(15)
  • statistical analysis (15)
  • 调查(16)
  • survey (16)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 什么是科学知识?它与“无意识”获得的知识有何不同?
  2. What is scientific knowledge? How does it differ from knowledge acquired “unconsciously”?
  3. 实践智慧与科学知识之间有何关系?
  4. What is the relationship between phronesis and scientific knowledge?
  5. 公正的旁观者工具是什么?为什么它对社会科学家很重要?
  6. What is the impartial spectator tool, and why is it important for social scientists?
  7. 为天辩证与其他类型的辩证有何区别?
  8. What distinguishes argumentation for the sake of heaven from other types of argumentation?
  9. 列出主要的社会科学并定义每个社会科学所涉及的领域。
  10. Name the principal social sciences and define the field with which each deals.
  11. 为什么在原始社会乃至中世纪进行科学研究会如此困难?
  12. Why would it have been difficult to carry on scientific investigation in primitive societies or even in the Middle Ages?
  13. 为什么社会科学政策比自然科学政策更难?
  14. Why is social science policy more difficult than natural science policy?
  15. 竞争性研究项目有什么优势吗?
  16. Are there any advantages to having competing research programs?
  17. 为什么社会科学领域很难制定精确的规律?
  18. Why is it difficult to formulate precise laws in the field of social science?
  19. 社会科学在什么意义上是科学的?
  20. In what sense is social science scientific?
  21. 为什么用实验方法研究社会问题常常是不可能的?
  22. Why is it often impossible to study social problems by means of the experimental method?
  23. 解释社会科学问题与精确自然科学问题的不同之处。
  24. Explain the ways in which the problems of social science differ from those of the exact natural sciences.
  25. 跨学科方法对于研究许多社会问题有哪些优势?
  26. What are the advantages of the interdisciplinary approach to the study of many social problems?
  27. 社会科学已经被分解成各个专业,用一个统一的理论把它们重新整合起来,为什么会是一个问题呢?
  28. Social science has been broken down into specialties. Why is it a problem to put them back together through a unified theory?
  29. 你认为十年后哪些新的社会科学领域会变得重要?为什么你认为如此?
  30. What new social science fields do you think will be important ten years from now? Why do you think sot

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 布莱恩·爱泼斯坦在他的 Ted Talk ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLbEKpL-5Z0 ) 中指出,科学家会提出两类问题:关于“它是什么”的问题,以及“它是如何运作的”的问题。他认为社会科学家没有提出哪一类问题?
  2. In his Ted Talk (www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLbEKpL-5Z0), Brian Epstein argues that there are two types of questions that scientists ask: what is it questions, and how does it work questions. Which type does he believe that social scientists are not asking?
  3. www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fairprojects/engineering-design-process/engineeringdesign-compare-scientific-method网站区分了科学方法和工程方法。这两种方法有何不同?
  4. The website www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fairprojects/engineering-design-process/engineeringdesign-compare-scientific-method distinguishes the scientific method from the engineering method. How do the methods differ?
  5. 前往维基百科的社会门户网站(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Social_sciences),选择地理类别的分支。这里列出了多少种不同的地理类型?
  6. Go to the society portal of Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Social_sciences) and choose the branches of geography category. How many different types of geography are listed?
  7. 请访问www.alcoholscreening.org参与关于饮酒的调查。完成调查后,请查看根据你的回答给出的反馈。这项调查的结果有什么用途?
  8. Take the survey about alcohol use at www.alcoholscreening.org. After taking the survey, look at the feedback you are given based on your answers. What can the results for this survey be used for?
  9. 在史蒂文·列维特(Steven Levitt)为他的堕胎研究辩护时(http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortionand-crime-who-should-you-believe/),犯罪率上升的替代解释是什么?批评者用来解释犯罪率下降的替代论据是什么?列维特同意这个替代论据吗?
  10. In Steven Levitt’s defense of his abortion study, (http://freakonomics.com/2005/05/15/abortionand-crime-who-should-you-believe/) what was one of the alternative suggestions for the increase in crime? What was the alternative argument that critics use to explain why the crime rate has decreased? Did Levitt agree with the alternative argument?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 格雷格·伊斯特布鲁克,《事实比看上去更好:恐惧时代的乐观理由》,纽约:阿歇特图书,2018 年。
  • Easterbrook, Greg, It’s Better Than It Looks: Reasons for Optimism in an Age of Fear, New York: Hachette Books, 2018.
  • 布莱恩·格林,《宇宙的结构》,纽约:克诺夫出版社,2004 年。
  • Greene, Brian, The Fabric of the Cosmos, New York: Knopf, 2004.
  • 赫克特,詹妮弗·迈克尔,《怀疑:历史:伟大的怀疑者及其创新遗产》加利福尼亚州旧金山:哈珀出版社,2004 年。
  • Hecht, Jennifer Michael, Doubt: A History: Tlte Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation, San Francisco, CA: Harper, 2004.
  • 米尔斯,C.赖特,《社会学的想象力》,纽约:牛津大学出版社,1959 年。
  • Mills, C. Wright, The Sociological Imagination, New York: Oxford University Press, 1959.
  • 平克,史蒂文,《当下的启蒙:理性、科学、人文主义和进步的案例》,纽约:企鹅兰登书屋,2018 年。
  • Pinker, Steven, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, New York: Penguin Random House, 2018.
  • 雷普切克,杰克,《哥白尼的秘密:科学革命如何开始》纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2007 年。
  • Repcheck, Jack, Copernicus’ Secret: How the Scientific Revolution Began, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.
  • Salganik, Matthew J.,《点点滴滴:数字时代的社会研究》新泽西州普林斯顿:普林斯顿大学出版社,2017 年。
  • Salganik, Matthew J., Bit by Bit: Social Research in the Digital Age, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.
  • 蒂莉,查尔斯,《为什么》,新泽西州普林斯顿:普林斯顿大学出版社,2006 年。
  • Tilly, Charles, Why, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006.
  • Wilson, Edward O.,《一致性:知识的统一》纽约:克诺夫出版社,1998 年。
  • Wilson, Edward O., Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, New York: Knopf, 1998.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

附录 社会科学的历史根源

appendix Historical Roots of Social Science

自然科学家告诉我们,地球已经存在了大约60亿年,生物至少已经存在了30亿年。然而,我们只能回溯到大约2600年前,当时西方哲学起源于古希腊的边缘(一些理论家认为希腊人对东方文明的思想做出了回应,但即使是我们如此广泛的吸收也存在局限性)。希腊人逐渐意识到,他们关于世界如何被创造和管理的古代描述——由众多神祇或万神殿创造——并非唯一可能的解释。他们被誉为首批建立独立于神学信条的理性理论的人;首批掌握理性概念并将其用作观察现实和发现逻辑联系的方式的人;首批实证主义和反神秘主义的人。公元前五世纪和四世纪的两位伟大的希腊思想家——柏拉图和亚里士多德——为我们今天所知和所用的知识奠定了基础。

Natural scientists tell us that the world has been around for some six billion years and that living things have been around for at least three billion. We will go back, however, only about 2,600 years, when Western philosophy began on the fringes of ancient Greece (some theorists hold that the Greeks responded to ideas from Eastern civilizations, but there are limits to even our broad sweep). The Greeks came to realize that their ancient account of how the world was created and administered—by an enormous collection of gods, or pantheon—was not the only possible explanation. They are credited with being the first to establish rational theory, independent of theological creed; to grasp rational concepts and use them as a way of looking at reality and seeing logical connections; and to be empirical and antimystical. Two great Greek thinkers of the fifth and fourth centuries BC, Plato and Aristotle, are responsible for establishing a basis for knowledge as we know it and deal with it today.

古希腊时期的哲学辩论在很多方面与今日的辩论如出一辙,它们解释了万物在变化的同时必然也保持着不变;否则,就必须凭空创造出来——这在逻辑上是不可能的。这些思想后来发展成为现代物理学,包括热力学定律以及物质既不能被创造也不能被毁灭——只能被转化的命题。古希腊人也思考了许多后来成为社会科学的问题;例如,他们思考国家的角色(政治学)、思想与社会互动的方式(心理学)以及个体在市场中的互动(经济学)。因此,社会科学的历史始于古希腊。然而,这段历史并非连续的。

The philosophical debates of the Greek period were in many ways the same ones that go on today, explaining how, when all things change, things must also be simultaneously unchanging; otherwise, something would have to be created out of nothing—a logical impossibility. These ideas would later develop into modern physics, including the laws of thermodynamics and the proposition that matter can neither be created nor destroyed—merely transformed. The Greeks also considered many of the issues that later became the social sciences; for example, they considered the role of the state (political science), the way minds interact with society (psychology), and individuals’ interaction within the market (economics). Thus, the history of the social sciences begins with the Greeks. The history, however, is not continuous.

如果不是东方文明的保存,希腊对知识的贡献可能早已失传(谁知道还有哪些贡献真的失传了呢?)。在十字军东征(1095年至1272年的宗教战争,欧洲基督徒试图夺取基督教在中东的传统领地)期间,欧洲人入侵东方,重新认识了古希腊人的学识,并将古希腊知识带回欧洲,到12世纪,这些知识已在欧洲普遍普及。在接下来的300年里,这些思想在欧洲缓慢传播,到15世纪中叶,希腊文明在欧洲的重新发现已非常普遍。由于从大约1453年(君士坦丁堡陷落)到17世纪末的这段时期,古代知识经历了重生和传播,因此被称为文艺复兴(法语,意为“重生”)。

Much of the Greek contribution to knowledge would have been lost (Who knows what other contributions actually have been lost?) were it not for its preservation by Eastern civilizations. On their forays into the East during the Crusades (the religious wars from 1095 to 1272 in which Christians in Europe attempted to capture Christianity’s traditional territory in the Middle East), Europeans became reacquainted with the learning of the ancient Greeks, and they brought back the body of ancient Greek learning to Europe, where it was generally available by the twelfth century. These ideas spread slowly throughout Europe over the next 300 years, and by the middle of the fifteenth century, rediscovery of Greek civilization in Europe was widespread. Because the period from about 1453 (the fall of Constantinople) to the end of the seventeenth century was characterized by the rebirth and proliferation of ancient knowledge, it became known as the Renaissance (a French word meaning “rebirth”).

文艺复兴对学者来说无疑是一个美好的时代。那时,人类的头脑仍然可以理解所有的知识。文艺复兴时期的一个理想是,受过教育的人能够知晓一切,掌握所有技能,拥有各种社交礼仪。真正的文艺复兴者愿意就任何问题接受所有挑战。

The Renaissance must have been a wonderful time for scholars. The totality of knowledge was still comprehensible by the human mind. An ideal in the Renaissance was that an educated person could know everything and exercise all skills and social graces. A true Renaissance man was willing to take on all comers on any issue.

随着知识储备的增长,想要掌握一切变得越来越困难,于是人们开始专攻特定领域。由此,人文学科(研究文学、音乐和艺术)与物理学之间自然产生了一条分界线。由于这一分界线中的物理学部分不够细化,物理学很快被拆分成实证研究(发展成为各种自然科学)和形而上学(发展成为哲学的非实证研究)。

As the store of knowledge grew, it became harder and harder to know everything, and so people began to specialize. A natural division opened, one between the humanities (the study of literature, music, and art) and physics. The physics part of this division was not refined enough, and soon physics was broken up into empirical studies (which developed into the various natural sciences) and metaphysics (nonempirical studies that developed into philosophy).

文艺复兴之前是中世纪(大约从公元476年罗马帝国灭亡,到公元1453年基督教宗教军队在君士坦丁堡被伊斯兰土耳其人击败的时期)。在中世纪,宗教在人们的生活中占据着如此重要的地位,以至于对宗教的研究被视为理所当然,并将所有其他学科联系在一起。例如,画家绘制宗教画,音乐家创作宗教音乐,而文学研究则是对圣经及其注释者的研究。如今看来显而易见的问题,例如“为什么人们会分成不同的阶级?”和“为什么穷人是贫穷的?”,在当时根本就不会被提出。事物之所以如此,是因为这是上帝的旨意。一旦人们了解了上帝的旨意,接下来的问题就是如何去执行它。例如,中世纪的学者们相信“公平”价格,并认为收取储蓄利息是不道德的。他们教授这些原则,并谴责那些不遵循这些教义的人。

The Renaissance was preceded by the Middle Ages (a period from roughly AD 476, and the end of the Roman Empire, to AD 1453, the defeat of Christian religious armies in Constantinople by the Islamic Turks). In the Middle Ages, religion was so central to life that the study of religion was taken for granted, and it tied together all the other fields of study. For example, painters painted religious pictures, musicians wrote religious music, and the study of literature was the study of the Bible and its commentators. Questions that today seem the obvious ones, such as “Why are people divided into classes?” and “Why are the poor poor?,” were simply not asked. Things were the way they were because that was God’s will. Once one knew God’s will, the issue was how to carry it out. For example, medieval scholars believed in a “just” price and that collecting interest on savings was immoral. They taught those principles and condemned those who did not follow their teachings.

随着文艺复兴的到来和持续,宗教联系引发了紧张局势,因为不同研究领域的学者得出了与传统不同的结论。教会的教义,开始了宗教学说与所谓理性主义学说与信仰的长期冲突。

As the Renaissance dawned and continued, that religious tie provoked tension as scholars in the various fields of study came to conclusions different from the church’s doctrines, beginning a long conflict between religious learning and beliefs and so-called rationalist learning and beliefs.

宗教解释与理性主义解释之间的冲突过去(现在)不可避免。理性主义方法将人类理性置于信仰之上。在理性主义方法中,人们寻求逻辑联系,并不断追问“你能证明吗?”。这意味着理性主义者必须设法弄清楚证明某事的意义。宗教方法将信仰置于理性之上。宗教解释无需证明任何事情:解释基于信仰而被接受。

The tension between religious explanations and rationalist explanations was (and still is) inevitable. The rationalist approach places human reason above faith. In a rationalist approach, one looks for logical connections and is continually asking the question “Can you prove it?” This meant that somehow the rationalists had to figure out what it meant to prove something. A religious approach places faith above reason. A religious explanation had no need to prove anything: Explanations were accepted on faith.

在整个文艺复兴时期,理性主义逐渐取代宗教成为知识的组织原则,与此同时,各个知识领域也开始沿着理性主义的路线划分。人文学科仍然反映着宗教问题;理性主义革命对人文学科的影响要晚得多。就其被考虑的程度而言,我们现在归类为社会科学的大多数问题,在当时都被视为历史的一部分。历史是文学和人文学科的一部分。它只是对已发生的事情的记录——它从不追问为什么会发生。追问为什么意味着不接受上帝的旨意。因此,大多数社会科学主要源于哲学,而非历史。

Throughout the Renaissance, rationalism more and more replaced religion as the organizing principle of knowledge, and as it did, the various fields of knowledge became divided along rationalist lines. The humanities still reflected religious issues; the rationalist revolution came much later to the humanities. To the degree that they were considered, most of the issues we now classify under social science were studied as part of history. History was part of literature and the humanities. It was simply a documentation of what had happened—it never asked why something happened. To ask why meant failure to accept God’s will. Thus, it was primarily from philosophy, not history, that most of the social sciences emerged.

自然科学和哲学根据探究模式和对“你能证明它吗?”这个问题的回答而划分。哲学研究本身则演变成各种领域,如逻辑学、道德学和认识论(知识研究)。

The natural sciences and philosophy divided along modes of inquiry and answers to the question “Can you prove it?” The study of philosophy itself evolved into a variety of fields, such as logic, morals, and epistemology (the study of knowledge).

启蒙运动

The Enlightenment

启蒙运动是理性主义最终取代宗教成为知识组织原则的时期。启蒙运动始于公元1650年至1700年,持续了约一百年。正是在这一时期,社会科学的发展扎根并蓬勃发展。

The Enlightenment is the period in which rationalism definitively replaced religion as the organizing principle of knowledge. The Enlightenment began between AD 1650 and AD 1700 and continued for about one hundred years. It is in this period that the development of the social sciences took hold and flourished.

到了启蒙运动时期,人们已经意识到,想要成为一位文艺复兴学者,通晓一切是不可能的。不仅不可能通晓一切,就连通晓某一学科的一切——比如,物理学的全部或哲学的全部——也是不可能的。人们开始专注于自己的研究。例如,化学和天文学就从物理学中分离出来了。

By the time of the Enlightenment, it had become evident that to know everything—to be a Renaissance scholar—was impossible. Not only was it impossible to know everything, but it also was impossible to know everything about just one subject—say, all of physics or all of philosophy. Individuals began to specialize their study. For instance, chemistry and astronomy were separated from physics.

随着哲学家们对其主题的深入研究,他们进一步将哲学划分为多个部分。其中一部分是元哲学,研究大多数学者一致认为无法通过经验检验的问题。例如:上帝无所不能,他能创造出一块重到无法搬动的石头吗?哲学的另一部分则研究那些至少在原则上可以通过经验检验的问题。例如:哪种类型的社会政治组织更可取?社会科学正是从第二部分发展而来的。(它们被称为科学,是因为它们原则上应该可以通过经验检验。)

As philosophers delved into their subject, they further divided philosophy into parts. One part was metaphilosophy, the study of issues that most scholars agreed were not empirically testable. One such issue was: Because God is all-powerful, can he create a rock so heavy he cannot move it? The other division of philosophy dealt with issues that could, in principle at least, be empirically tested. For instance: What type of political organization of society is preferable? It is from the second division that the social sciences evolved. (They were called sciences because they were in principle meant to be empirically testable.)

启蒙运动催生了社会科学,因为它否定了希腊罗马古典世界完美无缺的假设。在启蒙运动时期(大约整个十八世纪),人们普遍认为文明已经进步,对文明的思考也应该进步。此外,在启蒙运动之前的十七世纪,社会动荡不断——英法之间旷日持久的战争,以及天主教徒和新教徒之间关于如何解读上帝旨意的宗教冲突。这场斗争打破了宗教的解释,使人们深刻地意识到社会问题。天主教和新教这两种解释,哪一种是正确的?他们为什么争斗?我们能做些什么?随着人们试图解释这些社会问题并提出解决方案,社会科学得到了发展。

The Enlightenment spawned social science because the Enlightenment rejected the assumption that the classical world of the Greeks and the Romans was perfect. In the Enlightenment (roughly the whole of the eighteenth century), there was a general belief that civilization had improved and so too should the thinking about civilization. Moreover, in the seventeenth century, just preceding the Enlightenment, there was continual turmoil—a long drawn-out war between France and England and a religious conflict between Catholics and Protestants about how to interpret God’s will. That fight broke down the religious explanations and made people very much aware of social problems. Which of the two explanations, Catholic or Protestant, was right? Why were they fighting? What could be done about it? The social sciences developed as individuals attempted to explain those social problems and suggest what could be done to solve them.

尽管你或许觉得存在一些需要解决的社会问题显而易见,但这些问题并非总是显而易见。这种观点源自启蒙运动,它确立了人类的“三大耻辱”。这三大耻辱分别是:

Although the existence of social problems that require solutions may seem obvious to you, it was not always so obvious. This view is the product of the Enlightenment, which established the “three humiliations” of human beings. These are:

  1. 地球不是宇宙的中心。
  2. The earth is not the center of the universe.
  3. 人类和其他动物一样,都是自然界的生物。
  4. Humans are creatures of nature like other animals.
  5. 我们的推理能力受激情和潜意识欲望的影响。
  6. Our reasoning ability is subject to passions and subconscious desires.

在我们经历这些屈辱之前,思想家们可以信赖一种他们认为由上帝设立的秩序。社会问题是由上帝设定的,人们必须接受或忍受。直到启蒙运动开始之后,人们才开始相信社会和文化本身是历史和文化演进的产物——它们已经改变并将继续改变。

Before we experienced these humiliations, thinkers could rely on an order they believed was established by God. Social problems were set up by God and were to be accepted or endured. Only after the beginning of the Enlightenment did people begin to believe that society and culture are themselves products of history and the evolution of culture—that they had changed and would continue to change.

正如通常的情况一样,观点的转变总是伴随着一种矛盾的对立,人类的“屈辱”伴随着对人类力量的信仰。如果社会能够改变,那么这种改变至少在某种程度上可以由人类来引导和指挥。

As is often the case, the change in viewpoint had a paradoxical counterpoint, and human beings’ “humiliation” was accompanied by a belief in human beings’ power. If society could change, then the change could be, at least to some extent, guided and directed by human beings.

社会科学自诞生以来就将这两个方面交织在一起。有时它只是试图理解,承认我们力量的有限以及我们在宇宙中的位置;有时它又试图改变社会。

Since its conception, social science has entwined these two aspects. Sometimes it is simply trying to understand, and it accepts our limited powers and our place in the cosmos, and at other times it is trying to change society.

从哲学到社会科学

From Philosophy to Social Science

哲学向社会科学的演变在法国可见一斑。当时,哲学家们齐心协力,编纂了一部由丹尼斯·狄德罗和让·达朗贝尔主编的百科全书,历时数年,于18世纪中期问世。这部百科全书的全名宣称它是一部涵盖科学、艺术和工业的理性词典。与早期的编纂不同,它包含关于人类、社会和方法的系统文章以及许多社会科学的最初定义都可以追溯到这部巨著。

The evolution of philosophy into the social sciences can be seen in France, where philosophers joined to produce an encyclopedia, edited by Denis Diderot and Jean d’Alembert, which appeared over a span of several years in the mid-1700s. The full title of this encyclopedia proclaimed it to be a rational dictionary of science, art, and industry. Unlike earlier compilations, it contained systematic articles on humans, society, and method, and a number of the first definitions of the social sciences can be traced to this mammoth work.

狄德罗《百科全书》的卷首插图,写于启蒙运动时期。

Frontispiece from Diderot’s Encyclopedic, written during the Enlightenment.

审视社会问题的方式多种多样,随着学者们开始结合社会环境来思考人类,这种多样性很快便显现出来。此时,各个社会科学的历史彼此交织,难以自圆其说。在启蒙运动时期,学者们相互辩论,思想也快速演变。即便只是略微捕捉一下这种互动和辩论的脉络,也会陷入令人难以忍受的泥沼,这对社会科学课程来说毫无益处。因此,我们的探讨就此打住。

There are many ways to look at social problems, and as scholars began considering human beings in reference to their social environment, the diversity soon became apparent. The history of each of the social sciences becomes hopelessly tangled with that of each of the others at this point. In the Enlightenment, scholars were debating one another and ideas were quickly evolving. To capture even a flavor of the interaction and debate leads to a formidable morass, hardly conducive to a social science course. So we will stop our consideration here.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 启蒙(22)
  • Enlightenment (22)
  • 中世纪 (21)
  • Middle Ages (21)
  • 复兴 (21)
  • Renaissance (21)

第二 人类起源

chapter 2 Human Origins

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-2

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-2

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 总结达尔文的进化论
  • Summarize Darwin’s theory of evolution
  • 解释突变在进化论中的作用
  • Explain the role of mutation in the theory of evolution
  • 将 DNA 与基因和基因工程联系起来
  • Relate DNA to genes and genetic engineering
  • 区分间断均衡理论和连续均衡理论
  • Distinguish between the theory of punctuated equilibrium and the theory of continuous equilibrium
  • 简要概括过去三千万年人类的进化历程
  • Summarize briefly the evolution of human beings over the last thirty million years

不久前的祖先相信,我们赖以生存的地球是宇宙的中心,所有天体都围绕着它旋转。如今,我们知道,地球只是宇宙空间和物质的极小部分。然而,对人类来说,这极小的部分却比其他一切都重要,因为人类最关心的是自身、他们所居住的星球、他们的起源、他们的命运以及彼此之间的关系。即使他们渴望来世在遥远的天堂生活,他们仍然渴望让今生过得有意义、令人满足。

Our ancestors in the not-so-distant past believed that the globe we live on was the major focus of the universe and that all the heavenly bodies revolved around it. Today, we know that it is only an infinitesimal part of the cosmic universe of space and matter. To human beings, however, this tiny part is more important than all the rest, for the greatest concerns of human beings are themselves, the planet on which they live, their origin, their destiny, and their relationships with each other. Even if they hope for a future life in some far-off heaven, they still long to make their earthly life meaningful and satisfying.

人类首先是社会性动物。他们通常终其一生都与其他人类交往,并成为各种有组织的社会群体的成员。交往的质量和成员身份因社会群体的性质而异。对于一个家庭成员来说,交往通常是持续而密切的;但作为城镇居民,人类与大多数其他居民的交往只是偶尔的,而且往往是非个人化的。现代科技既在增加这种交往,也在减少这种交往。随着社交网络(例如 Facebook)成为人们生活的中心,他们与家人和邻居的实际相处时间减少了,但他们经常与世界各地的人们建立联系。

Human beings are first of all social creatures. They normally spend their entire lives in association with other human beings and as members of various organized social groups. The quality of association and membership varies according to the nature of the social group. For members of a family, association normally is constant and close, but as residents of a town or city, human beings’ association with the majority of the other residents is only occasional and often impersonal. Modern technology is both increasing and decreasing that association. As social networks (such as Facebook) become central to peoples lives, they spend less physical time with their families and geographic neighbors, but they often establish associations with people all over the world.

自然地理依然重要,大多数人依然将自己视为更大社会的成员,在某种程度上,他们通过共同的语言、共同的利益、地理区域、生活方式、共同的忠诚以及对共同的国家政府的依赖而联系在一起,共同的政府负责他们的防务和大部分公共福祉。在很大程度上,人们能否过上幸福美满的生活取决于他们所处社会的性质。

Physical geography is still important and most people still define themselves as members of a larger society, all bound together to some degree by a common language, common interests, geographic areas, ways of living, common loyalties, and reliance on a common national government for their defense and for much of their general welfare. To a great extent, the ability of people to live happy and satisfying lives depends on the nature of the society they live in.

24

24

人类起源

The Origin of the Human Species

人类起源于何时何地尚无绝对的定论,但传统观点认为,人类起源于约五百万至七百万年前的非洲。现代科学家认为,数百万年前,进化过程产生了我们的第一个人类祖先,当时一种类人生物从猿类中分离出来。他们认为,随后,一系列的变化造就了一群类人猿,随着时间的推移,他们越来越多地表现出现代人类有别于所有其他生命形式的基本身体特征。人们已经发现了可追溯到约五百万年前的类人物种化石,该领域的研究进展如此之快,以至于当您读到这篇文章时,可能已经发现了更古老的证据。在与猿类分离之后,类人物种被认为在进化过程中继续逐渐演变为其他类型的类人物种。

Where and when the human species originated is not known with absolute certainty, but the conventional view is that it was in Africa some five to seven million years ago. Modern scientists believe that millions of years ago, the process of evolution produced our first human ancestors when a humanlike creature branched off from the apes. They believe that then a long series of changes created a group of hominids who displayed over time more and more of the basic physical characteristics that distinguish modern human beings from all other forms of life. Fossils of humanlike species have been found that date back about five million years, and research in this field is progressing so rapidly that it is possible that by the time you read this even older evidence will have been found. After splitting off from apes, humanlike species are believed to have continued to gradually change to other types of humanlike species in the evolutionary process.

达尔文与进化论

Darwin and the Theory of Evolution

广义上的“进化”指任何渐进式变化的过程。因此,人们可以谈论小说、艺术或宗教的进化。但当不加限定地使用时,“进化”通常指有机进化,或指认为当今所有复杂生命形式都源自很久以前存在的早期生命形式,并且它们不断进化以适应不断变化的环境的理论。进化论由英国生物学家查尔斯·达尔文推广,他毕生致力于系统地寻找证据来支持进化的概念,并解释自然选择,他认为自然选择是进化得以完成的机制。

Evolution in its broadest sense refers to any process of progressive change. Thus, one may speak of the evolution of the novel, of art, or of religion. But when used without qualification, evolution ordinarily means organic evolution, or the theory that all the complex life forms of today have descended from earlier ones that existed long ago, and that they are continually evolving to adapt to their changing surroundings. The theory of evolution was popularized by the English biologist Charles Darwin, who devoted his life to systematically finding evidence to support the concept of evolution and to explaining natural selection, which he believed was the mechanism by which evolution was accomplished.

达尔文以博物学家的身份,随英国测量探险队乘坐贝格尔号进行了为期五年的航行(1831-1836)。在此期间,他获得了难得的机会研究种类繁多的动植物。他发现的生物体之间存在着相似之处和差异性,以及从简单到复杂的生命形式中显而易见的渐进步骤,令他感到困惑。最终,他发展了自然选择理论来解释这些关系。他发表这些结论的第一部重要著作是《物种起源》(1859年)。后来,在另一部著名著作《人类的由来》中,他专门探讨了人类的进化。

Darwin, in the capacity of a naturalist, made a five-year voyage with a British surveying expedition on the ship Beagle (1831-1836). During this time, he had unusual opportunities to study a great variety of plant and animal life. He was puzzled by the similarities and differences he found and by the progressive steps that often seemed evident in going from the simpler to the more complex forms of life. Ultimately, he developed his theory of natural selection to explain these relationships. The first major work in which he presented his conclusions was On the Origin of Species (1859). Later, in another famous book, The Descent of Man, he dealt specifically with the evolution of the human race.

© Nicku/Shutterstock

© Nicku/Shutterstock

虽然达尔文在很大程度上促成了进化论被科学家广泛接受,但他既不是第一个提出这一观点的人,也不是第一个对人类与某些动物在体貌上惊人的相似性印象深刻的人。早在公元前四世纪,亚里士多德就相信复杂生物是由简单生物逐渐进化而来的;而在达尔文之前的一代,法国动物学家JB拉马克发表了进化论。尽管该理论存在缺陷,但仍包含许多深刻见解。此外,在达尔文之前一百年,伟大的瑞典博物学家卡尔·林奈(1707-1778)根据物种体貌特征的相似性对物种进行了分类。他由此创造了“灵长类动物”一词——包括人类、猿和猴在内的一类动物——其突出特征是更大更复杂的大脑、更高的智力以及适合抓握的手脚。林奈在研究中,无法忽视这三种生物之间的相似之处。

Though Darwin was largely responsible for the widespread acceptance by scientists of the concept of evolution, he was neither the first to suggest the idea nor the first to be impressed by the remarkable physical similarity of human beings to certain animals. As far back as the fourth century BC, Aristotle believed in the gradual development of complex organisms from simpler ones, and a generation before Darwin, the French zoologist J. B. Lamarck had published a theory of evolution. Although flawed, it had many insights. Also, a hundred years before Darwin, the great Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) organized the various species by similarity of their physical attributes. In doing so, he invented the term primates—a group of animals including human beings, apes, and monkeys— whose outstanding characteristics are their larger, complex brains, high intelligence, and hands and feet adapted for grasping. In his studies, Linnaeus could not overlook the resemblances among these three kinds of creatures.

自然选择达尔文的进化论概念部分基于自然选择,即认为不同物种中,拥有更有利于生存条件的特征的个体更有可能生存下来,并将其特征遗传给后代。达尔文认为,每个物种的特征都由这些个体的出现所决定;因此,进化的方向很大程度上取决于“适者生存”。

Natural Selection Darwin’s concept of evolution was based in part on natural selection, the proposition that individual members of the various species that have characteristics more favorable for meeting the conditions of life are more likely to survive and pass on their characteristics to future generations. Darwin believed that every species is characterized by the appearance of such individuals; thus, the direction that evolution takes is largely determined by “the survival of the fittest.”

遗传学研究物种和个体的遗传特征如何以生物学方式传递给后代。进化发生的确切过程尚不清楚,但人们普遍认为遗传学发挥着重要作用。

Genetics studies how the hereditary characteristics of species and individuals are transmitted biologically to their offspring. The precise process of how evolution occurs is still unsettled, but it generally is believed that genetics plays an important role.

遗传学的奠基性研究是由格雷戈尔·孟德尔在19世纪末完成的。1发现动植物具有他所谓的遗传因子,也就是现在的基因。他将其定义为细胞内能够一代又一代地保留其原始特征的独立单位。由于这种保留,这些基因决定了后代的特征。因此,进化论的研究与遗传学的研究密切相关。

The foundation work in genetics was done by Gregor Mendel in the late nineteenth century.1 He discovered that plants and animals have what he called inheritance factors, now known as genes, which he defined as discrete units within cells that retain their original character for generation after generation. Because of this retention, these genes determine the characteristics of future generations. Thus, the study of evolution is closely connected to the study of genetics.

基因突变:遗传学解释了我们自身的存在方式,但并未解释我们为何以及如何改变。改变的过程被称为基因突变:随机的基因变化导致新的特征。在基因突变中,后代的特征可能与其父母截然不同。虽然我们尚不完全了解这些突变发生的原因,但我们知道,如果由此产生的后代存活下来,它们的新特征可以遗传给后代。

Mutation Genetics explains the way we are, but it does not explain why and how we change. That occurs through a process called mutation: random genetic changes that lead to new characteristics. In mutation, an offspring may have quite different characteristics from those of its parents. Although we do not completely understand why these mutations occur, we do know that if the resulting offspring survive, their new characteristics can be passed on to future generations.

突变是随机的。它们似乎是意外,是物种繁衍过程中的部分失败。我们也知道,暴露于某些化学物质或辐射会增加突变的发生率。大多数突变是中性的,但有些是致命的,有些则对后代有益。有益的突变使进化成为可能。在漫长的岁月中,进化可以带来动植物物种性状的巨大变化,在此过程中,物种的结构和生物功能往往会变得更加复杂。

Mutations are random. They seem to be accidents, partial failures of the process by which a species is able to reproduce its kind. We also know that the incidence of mutations is increased by exposure to certain chemicals or types of radiation. Most mutations are neutral, but some are fatal and some are beneficial to the offspring. Beneficial mutations make evolution possible. Over long periods of time, evolution can bring about great changes in the character of a plant or animal species, and in the process the structure and biological functioning of the species often become much more complex.

物种变异的例子似乎源于基因突变和自然选择(适者生存)的作用,这并不难找到。英国的胡椒蛾就是一个被详细研究的案例。这种蛾子大部分时间都附着在树上,是一些鸟类最爱的食物。直到19世纪中叶,博物学家采集标本时发现的所有胡椒蛾似乎都是浅色的。由于树皮通常较浅,且常覆盖着地衣,这起到了保护作用,使鸟类难以发现它们。但工业革命进行一段时间后,英国中部一些地区落下了太多的烟尘,导致树干和树枝颜色变深。这使得深色蛾子比浅色蛾子更难被发现,因此深色蛾子的平均寿命更长,繁殖的后代也更多。由于飞蛾在相对较短的时间内会经历很多代,在英国一些工业化程度较高的地区,自然选择几乎完全用深色飞蛾取代了浅色飞蛾。

Examples of changes in a species that seem to be the result of gene mutations and the operation of natural selection (survival of the fittest) are not difficult to find. The peppered moth in Great Britain is a case that has been studied in detail. This moth spends much of its time clinging to trees and is a favorite food of some birds. Until the middle of the nineteenth century, all peppered moths found by naturalists who collected specimens seem to have been light in color. Because the bark of the trees was usually light and often lichen-covered, this served as protection by making it difficult for the birds to see them. But after the Industrial Revolution had been under way for some time, so much soot fell in some areas of central Britain that the tree trunks and branches became darker. This made dark moths harder to see than light ones, and therefore the dark moths lived longer on average and produced more progeny. Because moths go through a great many generations in a relatively short period of time, in some of the more highly industrialized areas of Britain, natural selection almost completely replaced the light peppered moths with the dark ones.

基因含有两个等位基因,分别来自父母双方,影响特定的性状。在有性生殖的生物中,等位基因将性状从父母遗传给后代。显性等位基因控制遗传给后代的性状。隐性等位基因不会遗传其性状,除非两个等位基因都是隐性的。如果两个隐性等位基因配对,它们将决定受影响的性状。胡椒蛾是自然选择运作的一个相对简单的例子。已知这些蛾的颜色是由一个显性等位基因,或一对控制深色的显性等位基因和一对控制浅色的隐性等位基因决定的。

Genes contain two alleles, one from each parent, that affect particular characteristics. In sexually reproducing organisms, the alleles transmit characteristics from the parents to the off-spring. A dominant allele controls the characteristic that is transmitted to offspring. A recessive allele will not transmit its characteristics unless both alleles in the pair are recessive. If two recessive alleles are paired, they will determine the characteristic affected. The peppered moth presents a relatively simple example of the operation of natural selection. The color of these moths is known to result from a dominant allele, or a pair of dominant alleles for dark color, and a pair of recessive alleles for light color.

人类的特征同样源于显性和隐性等位基因的组合。就眼睛颜色而言,棕色眼睛为显性,蓝色眼睛为隐性。一个人必须拥有两个隐性等位基因才能表现出隐性特征;否则,显性特征占主导地位。

Human characteristics result from this same combination of dominant and recessive alleles. In the case of eye color, brown eyes are dominant and blue eyes are recessive. A person must have two recessive alleles to have the recessive characteristics; otherwise, the dominant characteristics prevail.

最早的人类,或者他们的类人祖先,很可能是在热带地区进化而来的,在那里,即使不穿衣服也能生存。他们的皮肤很可能很黑,因为浅色皮肤几乎无法抵御灼热的阳光。关于这些人是迁徙到世界其他地方,还是在世界各地独立发展,存在争议。无论哪种说法,人们都相信,随着时间的推移,他们能够从非洲迁徙到世界大部分地区。这可能是因为他们的身体特征发生了变化。例如,早期类人猿可能并不直立行走,但当他们发展出这种能力后,他们的旅行效率更高了。或许更重要的是他们工具制造技术的进步。有了工具,他们可以猎捕或拾荒其他动物,因此他们可以摄入比低能量素食所能提供的更多的蛋白质和脂肪。不仅他们的身体,他们的大脑也会因为摄入更多能量而发生变化。大脑的生长需要大量的能量。随着食物来源的扩展,类人猿能够在体力和智力上扩张他们的领地。

The first human beings, or their humanlike precursors, probably evolved in tropical regions where survival was possible without clothing. It is likely that they had very dark skin because light skin would have given little protection against the burning rays of the sun. There is debate about whether these people spread into other parts of the world or, instead, whether people developed independently in various parts of the world. Whichever the case, it is believed that in time they became capable of spreading out from Africa, eventually to most of the world. This was probably because their physical characteristics changed. For instance, early hominids probably did not walk upright, but when they developed that ability, they could travel more efficiently. More important, perhaps, was their development of tool making. With tools, they could hunt or scavenge other animals, so they could consume more protein and fat than their low-energy vegetarian diet would have provided. Not only their bodies but also their brains would have been changed with more energy. The brain needs lots of energy to grow. As their diet expanded, hominids could physically and intellectually expand their territory.

虽然所有早期类人猿可能都是深色皮肤,但随着他们的迁徙,情况发生了变化。在他们扩张到的最北部地区,阳光非常微弱,尤其是在漫长的冬季,而且经常被云层或雾气遮挡。深色皮肤在温暖、阳光充足的气候下曾是一种优势,但现在却变成了劣势,因为阳光穿透皮肤后,有助于人体产生维生素D,而维生素D是人体营养中必不可少的元素。在这些寒冷地区长期居住的人群——或许100,000 年或更长时间——通过基因突变和自然选择的过程,似乎逐渐形成了更浅的肤色。

Although all early hominids were probably dark-skinned, as they moved, that changed. In the most northern of the territories into which they expanded, the sun was very weak, especially in the long winters, and was often hidden by clouds or fog. Dark skin, which had been an advantage in warm, sunny climates, became a disadvantage because the sun’s rays, by penetrating human skin, help produce vitamin D, which is an essential element in nutrition. Populations that remained in these colder regions for very long periods of time—perhaps 100,000 years or more—seem gradually, through gene mutations and the process of natural selection, to have developed much lighter shades of skin.

自然选择的局限性自然选择并不能完全解释所有的进化变化。在小群体中,一些这样的变化可能是由基因突变引起的,这些突变虽然无害,但不会形成有助于生存的特征。但这些群体发展出的其他特征可能会增加它们的生存机会,因此它们的数量不断增加,并传播到更广阔的区域。自然选择或许可以解释非洲黑人的深色皮肤和北欧人的浅色皮肤,但它并不能明显地解释其他一些群体特征,例如亚洲人和西方人眼睛结构的不同,也无法解释如此多的相似性。因此,该领域的研究可能会继续下去。

Limitations of Natural Selection Natural selection does not completely account for all evolutionary changes. In small groups, some such changes may result from gene mutations that are harmless but do not create characteristics that contribute to survival. But other characteristics developed by such groups may increase their chances of survival, and so they grow in number and spread over wider areas. Natural selection may explain the dark skins of black Africans and the lighter skins of northern Europeans, but it is not an obvious explanation of some other group characteristics, such as the different construction of the eyes in Asian and Occidental people, nor does it account for as much similarity as exists. Therefore, work in this area will likely continue.

遗传学的最新进展

Recent Developments in Genetics

近年来,科学家极大地扩展了我们对遗传学的认识。人们曾认为基因是生命的基石,而如今,科学家已经解开了基因之谜,发现了DNA(即脱氧核糖核酸)这个小小的组成部分,它是基因的基本化学组成部分。科学家们很早就知道DNA的存在,但直到1953年,詹姆斯·沃森和弗朗西斯·克里克才解开了DNA的双螺旋结构,发现DNA类似于螺旋楼梯。他们发现,每一步都充当一个密码词,决定了氨基酸如何连接到构成所有生物的蛋白质中。这就像发现了生命的蓝图(但不知道生命最初是如何被创造的,也不知道是什么力量绘制了这张蓝图)。

In recent years, scientists have significantly extended our knowledge of genetics. Whereas once it was thought that genes were the building blocks of life, today scientists have unraveled the gene and discovered a small building block, DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid, the basic chemical building block of genes. Scientists had known for a long time that DNA existed, but it was only in 1953 that James Watson and Francis Crick unraveled its double helix structure, discovering that DNA resembled a spiral staircase. They found that each of the steps serves as a code word and determines how amino acids are linked into the proteins of which all living things are made. It was like discovering the blueprint for life (but not how life was originally created or what force had drawn the blueprint).

一旦对 DNA 有了合理的认识,科学家的下一步就是进行基因拼接和改变蓝图。这开辟了一个全新的领域。如果科学家可以改变一个基因,他们就可以通过克隆(即复制)现有形式甚至可能构建新形式来对生物体进行某种控制。这个过程称为基因工程,即重新排列遗传物质以创造新的人造生命形式或改变现有的生命形式。到 2001 年,科学家已经识别了所有人类基因,这意味着他们开始了解人类生物学构成。研究人员发现,人类只有大约 25,000 个基因,比蠕虫多约 6,000 个,而且人类与多种动物共享许多基因。

Once DNA was reasonably understood, the next step for scientists involved gene-splicing, and changing the blueprint. This opened up a whole new field. If scientists could change a gene, they could exercise some control over living organisms by cloning—that is, duplicating— existing forms and possibly building new ones. This process is called genetic engineering, rearranging genetic material to create new, human-made life forms or to change existing ones. By 2001, scientists had identified all the human genes, which meant they had the beginning of the set of directions to what makes us biologically what we are. Researchers found that humans had only about 25,000 genes, about 6,000 more than a worm, and that humans share many genes with a wide variety of animals.

随着科学家们对DNA和进化的研究,他们发现进化过程比他们最初想象的更为复杂。具体来说,他们发现还有另一种蛋白质——RNA(核糖核酸),它充当着信使的角色,决定或表达DNA在生殖过程中的组合方式。这一发现意义重大,原因有二。首先,它使生殖研究比单靠DNA控制进化过程的情况复杂得多。其次,它允许表观遗传因素影响生殖,这意味着后天因素可以影响先天因素。表观遗传学是研究环境对生殖影响的学科。例如,如果生物体受到压力,其后代的基因会编码一些对压力的反应,例如变得比平时更小。这种从后天因素到先天因素的反馈,使得进化变化发生的速度比基于突变的自然选择机制预测的要快得多。环境不仅选择适应环境的变化,还影响哪些基因组合,从而使习得的、由环境决定的性状能够遗传。

As scientists have studied DNA and evolution they have found that the evolutionary process is more complex than they originally thought. Specifically they are discovering that there is another protein, RNA (ribonucleic acid), that acts as a messenger and determines or expresses how DNA combines in the reproduction process. This discovery is important for two reasons. The first is that it makes the study of reproduction much more complicated than it would be if DNA alone controlled the evolutionary process. The second is that it allows for epigenetic influences on reproduction which means that nurture can affect nature. Epigenetics is the study of environmental influences on reproduction. For example, if living organisms are stressed, the genes of their children will encode some of their responses to stress, such as becoming smaller than usual. This feedback from nurture to nature is a path for much faster evolutionary changes to occur than would be predicted by mutation-based natural selection mechanisms. The environment not only selects for changes that fit the environment, it also influences which genes combine so that learned and environmentally determined traits can become inheritable.

DNA双螺旋结构。 © Science Photo Library/Alamy

The double helix of DNA.© Science Photo Library/Alamy

这张基因图谱与基因拼接技术相结合,让我们更好地理解了人与人之间差异的生物学原因,以及导致人发生改变的因素。利用如此大量的数据进行科学研究原始信息已在多个方向蓬勃发展,很可能需要对构成细胞的众多蛋白质的研究来补充。因此,一门新的应用科学——蛋白质组学——正在基因组计划的基础上发展。这项研究仍处于早期阶段,尽管一些科学家相信,他们很快就能将构成DNA的非生物化学物质组合起来,并通过以适当的比例将它们组合成生物体。然而,基因工程在医学领域的重大突破可能还需要几十年的时间。

This genetic map, combined with gene-splicing technology, has given us a much better understanding of the biological causes of differences among people and what can cause changes in people. Scientific research using this enormous amount of raw information has taken off in many directions and will likely have to be complemented by a study of the many proteins that are the building blocks of cells. Thus, a new applied science— proteomics—is building on the genome project. This study is still in its early stages, although some scientists believe that soon they will be able to combine the nonliving chemicals that make up DNA, and by combining them in the right proportions, be able to turn those chemicals into something living. The major breakthroughs from genetic engineering for medicine are, however, probably decades away.

掌握遗传密码会带来诸多社会和伦理困境。我们能延长寿命一百年吗?如果可以,应该这样做吗?我们能创造新的生命形式吗?如果可以,它们拥有什么权利?

Having our genetic codes presents many social and ethical dilemmas. Can we extend life spans by one hundred years? If we can, should we? Can we create new life forms? If so, what rights would they have?

进化论的修正

A Revised Theory of Evolution

进化论并非一成不变;随着更多证据的发现,该理论可能会发生变化。达尔文之后的进化论强调突变与自然选择之间的相互作用是进化的关键复制动力。物种的进化得益于有益突变和自然选择,这使得它们得以繁衍生息。在该理论中,进化需要很长的时间,新物种的出现也需要很长时间。最近的遗传学研究正在改变这一理论。通过研究各种物种的DNA,科学家发现物种可以与DNA相似的物种杂交。通常,这种结合的后代不育,但有时并非如此,如果自然选择青睐这些后代,这些后代就可以发展成为一个新物种。因此,在修正的进化论中,突变只是物种进化变化的驱动力之一;杂交是另一个驱动力。未来几年,生物学家将研究杂交在解释新物种发展方面的重要性,以及基因剪接方面的新研究是否会从根本上改变进化的性质和方向。

Evolutionary theory is not written in stone; as further evidence is discovered, the theory can change. The story of evolution that followed from Darwin was a theory that emphasized the interaction between mutation and natural selection as the key replicator dynamic of evolution. Species evolved because of beneficial mutations and natural selection, which allowed those species to thrive. In this theory, evolution occurs over long periods of time and it takes a long time for new species to develop. Recent work in genetics is changing that theory. Studying the DNA of various species, scientists have found that species can interbreed with species with somewhat similar DNA. Generally, the offspring of such unions is barren, but sometimes they are not, and, should natural selection favor the offspring, that offspring can develop as a new species. So in the modified theory of evolution mutation is only one of the driving forces of evolutionary change in species; hybridization is another. In the coming years biologists will be studying how important hybridization is explaining the development of new species and whether new work in gene splicing may fundamentally change the nature and direction of evolution.

多层次群体选择之争社会生物学家之间正在进行的另一场争论涉及多层次群体选择的存在——该理论认为自然选择不仅发生在个体层面,也发生在不同的群体层面。达尔文所使用的标准自然选择理论仅涉及个体层面的选择。在该理论中,个体因其对环境的适应性而被选择,因此,当环境发生变化时,那些具有适应该环境特征的个体也会发生变化,因为这会增加它们的生存可能性:适者生存。

The Multilevel Group Selection Debate Another debate that is ongoing among sociobiologists concerns the existence of multilevel group selection—the theory that natural selection takes place not only at the individual level but also at various group levels. The standard theory of natural selection that Darwin used involved selection only at the individual level. In it individuals are selected for their fitness to the environment, so that when the environment changes, those individuals with characteristics that fit that environment change because it increases their likelihood of survival: there is survival of the fittest individuals.

根据标准的自然选择理论,我们不会预期个体对群体表现出利他行为,因为这不会增加个体生存的可能性。但如果选择是在群体层面进行的,那么我们预期亲社会利他行为会存活下来,因为它会增加群体生存的可能性。在多层次的群体选择中,这种可能性会更大。所有类型的亲社会和利他行为都符合进化论。

Using standard natural selection theory one would not expect altruistic behavior toward a group, because that would not increase the likelihood of the individual’s survival. But if the selection is at the group level, then one would expect prosocial altruistic behavior toward a group to survive since it increases the likelihood of the groups survival. With multilevel group selection, the possibilities are much greater. All types of prosocial and altruistic behavior will be consistent with evolutionary theory.

一些社会科学家甚至认为,我们可以将群体视为一种新兴的感知,我们对是非善恶的感受,是正在形成的更广阔的感知现实的一部分。如果这是真的,那么最好将个体视为由各种组成部分组成的,这些组成部分以一种方式结合在一起,形成了一种集体感知,并在个体内部得以体现。正如我们是由为集体福祉而努力的组成部分组成一样,我们也是更大集体感知的组成部分,这种感知远远超出了我们个人的理解范围,但当我们感受到是非善恶时,我们会本能地感受到它。宗教在人类社会中扮演的重要角色,正是这种本能驱动我们扮演集体感知的一部分角色的体现。作为个体,我们无法完全理解这种感知,但它可能存在于某种更高的存在层面。

Some social scientists have even argued that we can see groups as a type of emergent sentience, and that our feelings about what is right or wrong are part of a larger sentient reality that is in the process of emerging. If this is true, it is best to think of individuals as made up of components which have come together in a way that allows a collective sentience that manifests itself within the individual. But just as we are made up of components that work for the good of the collective, so too are we components of a larger collective sentience, which is far beyond our individual understanding, but which we feel instinctually when we feel what is right or wrong. The strong role that religion has played within human societies is a manifestation of this instinctual push to play our role as part of the collective sentience, which we as individuals are unable to fully comprehend, but which may exist at some higher level of being.

多层次自然选择对于人类和文化尤其重要,因为它表明合作和亲社会行为,而不是自私,可能是个体被选择的特征之一,而将个体视为自私和理性的分析忽略了人类社会的一个重要元素。

Multilevel natural selection is particularly relevant for humans and culture since it suggests that cooperation and prosocial behavior, rather than selfishness, could be one of the traits that individuals are selected for, and that analysis treating individuals as selfish and rational is missing an important element of human society.

近期事态发展的一些启示

Some Implications of Recent Developments

技术的变化给社会带来了极其棘手的问题。例如,如果父母可以为孩子选择性格特征,他们会选择什么性格特征?他们的决定将如何影响总体人口?是否会划定一条界限,禁止克隆人类,但允许基因改造甚至控制现有人类?谁来划定这条界限?又将如何执行?研究人员收集的信息可能会被用于无法预料的、甚至可能是不良的方式。例如,政府可能会收集有关其公民的信息,并利用它来操纵他们。或者养老金系统可能会利用这些信息来识别潜在的长寿人群,并向他们收取更高的养老金。又或者,保险公司可能会利用这些信息拒绝为易患某些疾病的个人提供医疗保险。我们可以预见,这项科学事业将在整个21世纪产生重大的社会影响。

Changes in technology present society with extraordinarily difficult questions. If, for instance, parents can choose characteristics for their children, what characteristics will they choose, and how will their decisions affect the overall population? Will a line be drawn forbidding cloning of human beings but permitting genetic alteration and possibly control of existing human beings? Who would draw such a line and how would its boundaries be enforced? The information gathered by researchers might be used in unforeseen and possibly undesirable ways. For instance, a government might collect knowledge about its citizens and use it to manipulate them. Or pension systems might use it to identify potentially long-lived people and charge them more for pensions. Or insurance companies might use the information to deny medical coverage to individuals predisposed to certain diseases. We can expect significant social repercussions from this scientific enterprise throughout the twenty-first century.

毫无疑问,道德、政治、宗教、科学和政府力量将在国际范围内动员起来,就这些问题展开辩论。思考这些问题,你就能体会到新发现将如何对我们赖以生存的社会体系产生深远的影响。简而言之,我们未来的社会进化很可能将受到我们所掌握的人类进化信息的巨大影响。我们所知道的知识将改变我们自身。

Moral, political, religious, scientific, and governmental forces will undoubtedly mobilize on an international scale for debates on these issues. Thinking about them gives you a sense of how new discoveries can have profound effects on the social system in which we live. In short, our future social evolution will likely be substantially influenced by the information we have about our human evolution. What we know will change what we are.

物种应该重新分组吗?随着我们对生物学知识的不断进步以及我们对生命形式基因组成的了解越来越多,我们区分物种并将它们按进化顺序排列的能力发生了巨大的变化。我们目前使用的物种划分是由卡尔·林奈(1707-1778)创建的。他的划分主要基于身体特征。随着我们对基因组成认识的不断提高,我们逐渐意识到身体相似并不一定意味着基因相似,反之亦然。鉴于基因组成的重要性,按基因成分划分物种似乎是合乎逻辑的。然而,按身体特征划分物种仍然是主要的划分方式。这是任何知识和术语体系中惯性的一个例子。它们进化得很慢。

Should the Species Be Regrouped? As our knowledge of biology has progressed and we have developed far more information about the genetic makeup of life forms, our abilities to differentiate species and to place them in orders of progression have changed enormously. The divisions of the species that we currently use were created by Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778). His divisions were determined primarily by physical traits. As our knowledge of genetic makeup has improved, we have come to realize that physical similarities do not necessarily imply genetic similarity, and vice versa. Given the importance of genetic makeup, it would seem logical to organize species by genetic components. However, division by physical characteristics is still the dominant division used. This is an example of the inertia in any system of knowledge and terminology. They evolve slowly.

社会生物学

Sociobiology

遗传学研究并不是唯一一个取得进步的进化相关领域;进化论研究本身也取得了进步,并且在某个方面得到了扩展。

The study of genetics is not the only evolution-related field to experience progress; the study of evolution itself has progressed, and on one front it has been extended.

一群被称为社会生物学家的科学家认为,人类行为的进化方向与解剖学和人体化学的方向一致:旨在提高物种的生存机会。那些无法提高生存机会的行为最终将导致物种灭绝。社会生物学是社会学和生物学的结合,旨在构建人类行为的遗传基础理论。

A group of scientists called sociobiologists has argued that human behavior evolves in the same direction that anatomy and body chemistry do: to increase the chances of survival of the species. Behavior that does not increase chances of survival will eventually lead to destruction. Sociobiology is a combination of sociological and biological reflections that theorize a genetic basis for human behavior.

社会生物学的领军人物、哈佛大学昆虫学家爱德华·O·威尔逊(Edward O. Wilson)举了一个例子,或许有助于阐明社会生物学家的推理。人们天生就对陌生人有一种固有的恐惧。这种恐惧是一种必要的遗传特征;它是一种“准备学习”的形式,在不到一岁的婴儿身上就能看到。如果婴儿没有这种恐惧,他们就更容易受到攻击,从而更难存活下来。经过几代人的努力,表现出这种特征的个体通常比不具有这种特征的个体存活下来的更多,最终这种遗传特征将成为物种的固有特征。

A leader in sociobiology, Harvard entomologist (one who studies insects) Edward O. Wilson has provided an example that may help clarify the reasoning sociobiologists use. People are born with an inherent fear of strangers. This fear is a necessary genetic trait; it is a form of “prepared learning” that can be seen in infants less than a year old. If infants did not have this fear, they would be more susceptible to attack and thus less likely to survive. Over generations, more individuals who exhibit this trait generally will survive than individuals who do not, and eventually the genetic trait will become inherent in the species.

这个论点看似简单,无关紧要,但如果我们将“陌生人”替换为“其他种族的人”,这个论点就会变得更加棘手,并与我们社会对公平的看法相冲突。人们可以将任何行为合理化,至少可以将其合理化为“基因决定”。因此,社会生物学引发了强烈的攻击,称其“为种族主义辩护”。对此,社会生物学家指出,他们的论点并非基因直接控制行为,而是基因发挥了作用。威尔逊表示:“我们认为,在进化过程中,存在一种机制,它不断地贯穿整个循环:基因变异、文化变异、基因变异等等。” 提出的问题极具争议,让人想起早期基督教哲学家们争论的自由意志决定论问题。我们做这些事是因为我们被设定了程序,还是出于我们的选择?我们怀疑这场争论还会持续一段时间。

The argument may seem simple and of little consequence, but if we replace “strangers” with “persons of another race,” the argument becomes more problematic and conflicts with our society’s views on equity. People can justify or at least rationalize any behavior as being “in their genes.” Therefore, sociobiology has provoked strong attacks that it “justifies racism.” In response, sociobiologists point out that their argument is not that genes directly control behavior, but rather that genes play a role. Wilson states, “We’re suggesting that there is a mechanism which one sees during evolution continuously around the circuit: genetic change, cultural change, genetic change, and so on.” The issues raised are highly controversial and are reminiscent of the free will determinism issue early Christian philosophers debated. Do we do what we do because we are programmed to do it, or do we do it by choice? We suspect the debate will continue for some time.

“这绝对行不通。她有专利,他没有。”

“It’ll never work out. She’s patented, he isn’t”

© www.cartoonstock.com

© www.cartoonstock.com

社会生物学几乎只关注遗传自然选择,这种担忧导致了心理学新领域的发展——进化社会心理学。该领域承认生物和遗传因素在解释行为方面发挥着作用,但认为其他因素也很重要。

The concerns about the almost singular focus of sociobiology on genetic natural selection have led to the development of a new field of psychology—evolutionary social psychology This field accepts that biological and genetic factors play a role in explaining behavior but argues that other factors are also important.

间断平衡与渐进变化

Punctuated Equilibrium Versus Gradual Change

进化论也在另一个方面受到挑战。达尔文认为进化是一个渐进的自然选择过程,适者生存是最有可能的现象。如今,像古生物学家奈尔斯·埃尔德雷奇和博学士斯蒂芬·杰伊·古尔德这样的进化论者认为,进化的特点是长期的相对稳定,其间穿插着突变,随后更加稳定,然后又发生更多突变,如此反复。一种解释这种现象的假设是,环境的变化导致物种分化并特化到几个新的生态位,从而创造出新的谱系。在古尔德的理论中,一个物种会在数千年或数十万年内保持不变,然后突然发生某种事情改变它(也许是基因剪接?),甚至将其消灭。古尔德的理论可以被认为是宏观进化——周期性的突然大变化,而通常的渐进进化概念可以被认为是微观进化——一系列连续的、几乎难以察觉的微小变化。

Evolution theory is also being challenged on another front. Darwin saw evolution as a gradual process of natural selection and survival of the fittest as the most likely phenomenon. Now evolutionists such as paleontologist Niles Eldredge and polymath2 Stephen Jay Gould argue that evolution is characterized by long periods of relative stability that are punctuated by sudden changes, followed by more stability, followed by more changes, and so on. One hypothesis why this occurs is that changes in environment cause species to diversify and specialize into several new niches, creating new lineages. In Gould’s theory, a species will be unchanged for thousands or hundreds of thousands of years and then suddenly something will happen that will change it (perhaps gene-splicing?) or even wipe it out. Gould’s theory can be thought of as macroevolution—periodic sudden large changes, and the normal concept of gradual evolution can be thought of as microevolution—a continuous, almost unnoticeable succession of small changes.

争论的焦点在于古人类学家在考古发掘中发现的数百万年前的化石证据。在进化研究中,考古学家发现了一些化石,展现了人类等各种物种所经历的变化。然而,科学家们期望最终能够填补的巨大空白仍然存在。古尔德的理论正是针对这一问题。古尔德的间断平衡理论认为,进化是一个突然停止/启动的过程,其间存在着很长的静止期。

The debate centers on fossil evidence from millions of years ago that paleoanthropologists find in their digs. In the study of evolution, archaeologists have found fossils that demonstrate the changes various species such as humans have undergone. However, large gaps that scientists expected to fill eventually somehow remain. It is here that Gould’s theory enters. Gould’s punctuated equilibrium theory holds that evolution is a stop/go process of sudden change, with long intervening periods of no change.

图 2.1显示了间断平衡与渐进进化之间的区别。向上倾斜的直线代表传统观点,而新观点——间断平衡——则用水平线表示,每百万年左右会出现一个突然向上的跳跃或阶段。哈佛大学考古学家彼得·威廉姆森在肯尼亚图尔卡纳湖的蜗牛化石中发现了一个突然跳跃的例子。他发现,在两百万年的时间里,发生了两次突变,两次突变都发生了重大的进化变化,而两次突变之间几乎没有发生变化。因此,在古尔德看来,进化不过是一系列革命,其间穿插着长时间的平静。间断平衡进化论之所以引起人们的兴趣,是因为它解释了旧理论无法解释的部分现象。例如,他的理论可以解释数百万年前恐龙的突然消失。如果进化是一个连续的过程,它们就会慢慢灭绝。

The difference between punctuated equilibrium and gradual evolution can be seen in Figure 2.1. The straight upward-sloping line represents the traditional view, and the new view, punctuated equilibrium, is depicted by the horizontal lines with sudden upward jumps or stages every million or so years. An example of sudden jumps has been found in snail fossils at Lake Turkana in Kenya by Harvard archaeologist Peter Williamson. He discovered that, over a two-million-year period, there were two sudden changes in which major evolutionary changes occurred, and in between almost no change occurred. Thus, in Gould’s view, evolution is merely a series of revolutions interspersed with long periods of calm. The punctuated equilibrium theory of evolution has attracted interest because it explains parts of the phenomenon that the old theory could not. For example, his theory could explain the sudden disappearance of dinosaurs millions of years ago. If evolution were a continual process, they would have died off slowly.

古尔德的间断平衡理论受到了彼得·谢尔顿的质疑。古尔德之前的研究人员已经注意到,一组与螃蟹相关的生物——三叶虫——中存在一个显著的“断层”(见图2.2)。在这些三叶虫的进化过程中,似乎出现了一个突然的停滞期,之后这组三叶虫又重新开始进化,但呈现出一些不同的特征,尤其是在肋骨数量上。古尔德的理论曾被引用,认为缺乏能够用稳定变化的肋骨数量来填补这一缺口的三叶虫。然而,谢尔顿经过艰苦的努力,找到了能够填补这一缺口的样本,表明三叶虫的平均肋骨数量随时间缓慢变化。谢尔顿的发现引发了诸多争议,普遍的看法是,双方都在某种程度上是正确的,有些变化可能是间断的,而有些变化可能是渐进的。但这些观点正在演变,未来几年可能会发现更多证据。

Gould’s punctuated equilibrium theory was challenged by Peter Sheldon. Researchers before Gould had noted a significant gap in a set of crab-related creatures called trilobites (see Figure 2.2). In the evolution of these trilobites, it appeared that there was a sudden stop, and then the set of trilobites picked up again but with some different characteristics, especially in the number of ribs they had. The absence of trilobites that would have filled the gap with a steadily changing number of ribs had been cited as supporting Gould's theory. However, through painstaking work, Sheldon found specimens that filled in the gaps, showing that the average number of ribs the trilobites contained changed slowly over time. Sheldon's findings generated much debate, and the general feeling was that both sides were in some way correct and that some changes may be punctuated and others may be gradual. But these views are evolving and more evidence is likely to be found in years to come.

人类的进化

The Evolution of Human Beings

抽象科学理论中发生的很多事情并不会引起新闻,除了《国家地理》《科学美国人》等期刊上的文章。然而,由于它进化论在一些人看来似乎与《圣经》的创世论相悖,从达尔文时代到我们这个时代,进化论一直引起大众媒体的争议,尤其是那些相信对《圣经》进行字面解释的原教旨主义者的争议。

Much of what happens in abstract scientific theory does not make news, except for articles in such periodicals as National Geographic and Scientific American. However, because it has seemed to some people to go against the Bible’s version of creation, evolution has stirred popular press controversy from Darwin's time to ours, especially on the part of fundamentalists who believe in literal interpretations of the Bible.

图2.1一种可能的进化理论。传统观点认为,进化由一条向上倾斜的直线表示。近年来提出的另一种观点认为,平衡状态由水平线表示,每隔数千年或数十万年就会出现一次突然向上的跳跃。需要注意的是,纵轴上的时间长度是一些权威机构的估计值。其他权威机构给出了不同的时间长度,但所有权威机构都认为这些时间非常非常长。为简单起见,该图表并未显示所有现已灭绝但被认为在进化为智人的各个时期都存在过的物种。

Figure 2.1A possible theory of evolution. In the traditional view, evolution is represented by the straight, upward-sloping line. In an alternative view that has been advanced in recent years, equilibrium is represented by the horizontal lines with sudden upward jumps at intervals of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. Note that the lengths of the time periods on the vertical axis are the estimates of some authorities. Other authorities give other lengths of time, but all authorities agree that the time periods are very, very long. In the interest of simplicity, the graph does not show all the species that are now extinct but are thought to have existed at various periods along the way to Homo sapiens.

科学、信仰与争议

Science, Faith, and Controversy

进化论引发了多大的争议,可以从一些著名的法庭审判中看出。例如,1925年,田纳西州高中生物教师约翰·斯科普斯因违反州法律而被起诉,该法律禁止在公立学校教授进化论。直到20世纪60年代末,这项法律以及几个邻近州的类似法律才被废除。近年来,进化论再次成为头条新闻,这次是因为一个名为“科学创造论者”的团体发起的攻击。科学创造论并非一门科学,而是一种信念,认为所有现存的生命形式都是在某个时刻自发创造的。随着时间的推移。支持者推动了许多州通过法规,要求在公立学校课堂和教科书中教授进化论时,教授实际上是宗教反对进化论的内容。作为回应,出版商建议作者淡化教科书中对进化论的讨论,以便让科学创造论者能够接受。结果是,一些教科书对进化论的讨论非常有限。许多教育工作者对此表示抱怨,1985年,加利福尼亚州对这些抱怨采取了一些措施。它通知出版商,除非他们的教科书正面处理这个问题,否则他们的教科书将被加州公立学校取消采购。

Just how much controversy evolution has caused can be seen in some famous court trials that have dealt with the issue. In 1925, for example, a Tennessee high school biology teacher, John Scopes, was prosecuted for and found guilty of breaking a state law forbidding the teaching of evolution in the public schools. The law and others like it in several neighboring states were not repealed until the late 1960s. In recent years, evolution has again made headlines, this time over attacks by a group called scientific creationists. Scientific creationism is not a science, but rather the belief that all present life forms were spontaneously created at one point in time. Proponents have helped pass statutes in a number of states requiring the teaching of what is actually religious objections to evolution wherever the latter is presented in public school classes and textbooks. In response, publishers have suggested to their authors that they tone down the discussion of evolution in textbooks so that it is acceptable to the scientific creationists. The result has been that some textbooks have devoted only minimal discussion to evolution. Many educators have complained, and in 1985 California did something about those complaints. It informed publishers that unless their books dealt with the issue head on, their books would be dropped from public school purchases in California.

图2.2三叶虫。三叶虫与现代木虱相似。其化石的发现挑战了古尔德的间断平衡理论。

Figure 2.2Trilobites. Trilobites resembled modern wood lice. The discovery of their fossils challenged Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium.

坦率地说,没有任何美国专业科学家组织为神创论提供任何科学支持。事实上,几乎所有公认的科学权威都强烈反对这种对学术自由、传统科学方法以及美国政教分离原则的攻击。1982年的一项联邦法院判决支持了科学家们的观点,推翻了阿肯色州一项强制该州公立学校学习科学神创论的法律,理由是神创论并非科学而是宗教,因为它建立在精神层面而非客观层面的前提上,因此违反了美国政府治理方式中政教分离的原则。

To put the matter bluntly, no organization of US professional scientists has given any scientific support to creationism. In fact, almost all recognized scientific authorities strongly reject such assaults on academic freedom, the traditional scientific method, and the American principle of separation of church and state. A 1982 federal court decision endorsed the scientists’ view by throwing out an Arkansas law mandating the study of scientific creationism in the state’s public schools on the grounds that creationism is not a science but religion, as it rests on a spiritual, not objective, premise and thus violates the separation of church and state principle that is part of the US approach to government.

二十世纪末,堪萨斯州教育委员会决定,各校区可自行选择是否教授进化论。此举在全国范围内引发了激烈的讨论,但这并非美国教育的主流趋势。反对该条款的理由之一是,该条款的实施将使堪萨斯州学校系统的毕业生脱离美国科学理论的主流,从而对许多未来的职业发展造成不利影响。堪萨斯州的校区中,只有少数选择停止教授进化论,在2000年的州选举中,几位支持停止教授进化论的州教育委员会成员竞选连任,最终落败。这场争议持续至今,一些州政府仍在就限制进化论教学的法案进行辩论。

At the close of the twentieth century, the Kansas State Board of Education decided that individual school boards could choose whether to teach evolution. This step evoked spirited discussion throughout the country and does not represent a major trend in US education. One of the objections to the provision was that its implementation would place graduates of Kansas school systems outside the mainstream of US scientific theory and thus at a disadvantage in many future careers. Few Kansas school boards chose to discontinue the teaching of evolution, and in the state elections of 2000, several proponents of discontinuance who were running for reelection to the state board were defeated. The controversy has continued, and a number of state governments are still debating bills to limit the teaching of evolution.

这些争论之所以重要,是因为科学创造论者曾将古尔德的进化论(该理论认为进化是突然发生的而非渐进的)作为科学证据来支持他们的立场。他们认为,地球数十亿年存在的物理证据可以用一系列的创造来解释,每一次创造都取代了之前的创造。但正如古尔德所解释的那样,他的理论并非反进化论;它只是挑战了进化发生的过程

These debates are relevant here because scientific creationists have used Gould's evolutionary theory of sudden rather than gradual evolutionary changes as scientific evidence to support their position. They say that the physical evidence of earth’s multibillion-year existence can be explained by a series of creations, each one replacing the one before it. But as Gould explained, his theory is not anti-evolutionary; it merely challenges the process whereby evolution occurs.

关于课堂教学内容的实际问题过于复杂,无法在此详述。然而,必须强调的是,尽管专业科学界不时对进化论的具体细节提出合理的批评,但负责任的科学家并没有否认其基本观点。“科学创世论”一词在很多方面都自相矛盾。创世论始终秉持着这样一种信念:生命源于神力的突然作用,且从未发生过显著的变化。这本质上是对自然起源的宗教解读。科学研究​​因果关系,因此寻求连续性。这并不是说宗教信仰不能与科学共存。最终,“存在”或“存在”必须得到解释,而目前还没有任何科学理论能够解释事物是如何从虚无中被创造出来的。3

The actual issues of what should be taught in classrooms are too complex to be addressed here. However, it must be stressed that although there have been sound professional scientific criticisms from time to time of the specifics of evolution, responsible scientists have not denied its basic point. The phrase scientific creationism is in many ways a contradiction in terms. Creationism begins and ends with a belief that life sprang from a sudden act of divine power and has not appreciably changed. This is an essentially religious version of natural origins. Science studies cause and effect and thus looks for continuity. This is not to say that religious faith cannot coexist with science. Ultimately, “existence” or “being” must be explained, and no scientific theory can yet explain how something was created out of nothing.3

20世纪90年代中期,一种更容易被接受但仍存在争议的宗教与科学融合方法应运而生。它被称为智能设计论,并成为围绕《熊猫与人类》教科书争论的焦点。智能设计论的核心论点是,世界过于复杂,无法自行发展,只能用某种初始智能的概念来解释。这与科学创世论的不同之处在于,它并不挑战进化论的证据,而只是在其基础上添加了一套关于进化论背后原因的理论。批评者认为,这是一种将创世论引入学校的狡猾手段,而支持者则认为它是一个可接受的假设,因为它讨论的问题与科学和经验证据并不矛盾。让我明确一点,社会科学并不否认宗教的重要性,也不否认我们属于更大感知群体的可能性,正如我们在群体思考中讨论的那样。选择。但社会科学确实认为,我们对更广泛感知的理解需要与我们对进化的理解保持一致,并且,如果一个理论被认为具有潜在的科学真实性,那么它就必须以一种可通过经验检验的方式被具体化,并且在它被经验检验之前,它应该被承认是基于信仰的。

In the mid-1990s, a more acceptable but still controversial method of integrating religion into science developed. It was called intelligent design and it was the center of a fight about a textbook entitled Of Pandas and People. The central thesis of intelligent design is that the world is too complex to have developed on its own and that it can only be explained with some concept of initial intelligence. This is different from scientific creationism in that it does not challenge evolutionary evidence. It simply adds to it a theory of what is behind evolution. Critics see it as a sneaky way to introduce creationism into schools, while supporters see it as an acceptable hypothesis because it discusses issues that science and empirical evidence do not contradict. Let me be clear, social science does not deny the importance of religion, and of the possibility that we are part of a larger sentience, as we discussed in the consideration of group selection. But social science does hold that our understanding of that larger sentience needs to be consistent with our understanding of evolution, and that, if a theory is to be considered potentially scientifically true, it be specified in a way that is empirically testable, and that until it is empirically tested, it be acknowledged as being based on faith.

现代人类的祖先

Predecessors of Modern Humans

一些最有趣的进化研究都与人类的进化有关。尽管人类与其他灵长类动物关系密切,但我们仍不确定它们是如何进化的。遗传学的新研究,加上古人类学家的不断发现,正在加深我们的理解。即使存在一些过于简化的情况,我们也能勾勒出一个基本的轮廓。

Some of the most interesting studies of evolution have concerned the evolution of humans. Though humans are closely related to the other primates, we are not certain how they evolved. New work in genetics, combined with continual finds of paleoanthropologists, is improving our understanding, and with allowance for oversimplification, a basic outline can be drawn.

生命起源被认为发生在数十亿年前,当时单细胞生物从原始软泥中诞生。几千年来,这些生物进化出了各种各样的生命形式。人类起源于灵长类动物,大约在六千五百万到七千万年前进化而来;而人类物种的起源——一种类似猿猴的生物,则被认为出现在两千二百万到三千八百万年前。这种类人猿物种被认为是现代猿类和人类的共同祖先。图2.3给出了这一进化过程的总体概述。其中的每个方框代表一个不同的物种。

The origin of life is thought to have occurred billions of years ago as one-celled organisms arose from the primordial ooze. Over the millennia, the organisms evolved into a wide variety of life forms. Primates, from which humans developed, evolved some sixty-five to seventy million years ago, and a monkey-apelike creature from which the human species evolved is thought to have appeared somewhere between twenty-two and thirty-eight million years ago. This apelike species is considered the common ancestor of modern apes and humans. Figure 2.3 gives you a general sense of that evolution. Each box in it represents a different species.

图2.3人类和其他高等灵长类动物可能源自其共同的祖先类型。

Figure 2.3Possible lines of descent of humans and other higher primates from their common ancestral type.

首先,让我们解释一下,物种是指外貌相似、能够相互交配并产生可育后代的个体的大类。今天的人类是智人(Homo sapiens,具有推理能力的人)的唯一成员。4也是唯一幸存的人类物种。至少还有另外两种人类物种——能人( Homo habilis,具有制造工具的能力)和直立人( Homo erectus,能够笔直站立的人)早已灭绝。这三种人类类型都属于同一总括类别或属。

First let us explain that a species is a broad category of individuals who look alike and can mate with each other to produce fertile offspring. Today's humans are the only members of the species Homo sapiens (reasoning man).4 They are also the only surviving human species. At least two other human species, Homo habilis (man with toolmaking ability) and Homo erectus (man who stands up straight), have long since become extinct. All three of these types of humans belong to the same umbrella category, or genus.

有一种人类与我们的关系比刚才提到的任何物种都更远,它属于一个独立的属——南方古猿,这种生物已经灭绝了数百万年。人类和南方古猿与几种现存和已灭绝的猿类同属人科。整个南方古猿科都属于灵长类动物的大类。

A human type more distantly related to us than any of the species just mentioned belongs to a separate genus, Australopithecus, creatures who have been extinct for millions of years. Humans and Australopithecines belong to the family Hominidae, along with several kinds of apes, both living and extinct. And the whole family belongs to the larger group of primates.

从类人猿生物到人科动物这些类人猿生物何时开始演变为人科动物(类似人类的双足动物)尚不清楚,但据信在非洲大约在六百万至一千万年前,而在欧洲和亚洲则晚了几百万年。这些时间段的化石记录很少或根本没有,因此,这一估算是基于现存人类与现存灵长类动物之间的基因差异,并结合对这些生物之间差异发生时间的估计。

From Apelike Creature to Hominid The date when these apelike creatures began to change to hominids, humanlike creatures who stood on two feet, is unclear, but it is believed to have been somewhere between six and ten million years ago in Africa, and several million years later in Europe and Asia. The fossil record for these time spans is poor or nonexistent, so the estimate is based on genetic differences between living humans and living primates combined with estimates of how long it has taken for the differences among these creatures to occur.

关于人类与其他灵长类动物的血统存在诸多争议。为了解决这一争议,研究人员越来越多地转向分子生物学和实验室DNA化学分析领域。根据化石证据,人类与猿类之间的进化分裂可能早在2500万年前就已发生,并持续了很长时间。1991年在南部非洲发现的一块据称距今1500万年的前人类颌骨化石进一步证实了这一观点。然而,人类血液与黑猩猩血液的比较结果与这一证据相矛盾,表明这种分化发生的时间要晚得多——可能只有700万年前。DNA分析结果倾向于支持更晚的年代测定,事实上,哈佛大学戴维·赖希最近的研究表明,黑猩猩和类人猿杂交了数十万年,甚至数百万年。即使在今天,黑猩猩的基因结构与人类的差异也只有1.2%。尽管赖希的假设仍有争议,但大多数科学家普遍认为,基因分析将为人类进化提供重要线索。

Much debate exists about the lines of descent of humans and other primates. In trying to resolve this debate, researchers are turning more and more to the realm of molecular biology and chemical analysis of DNA done in the laboratory. According to fossil evidence, the evolutionary split between human beings and apes might have occurred as early as twenty-five million years ago and continued for a long time. This view was strengthened by a fossil said to be of a fifteen-million-year-old prehuman jawbone found in 1991 in southern Africa. This evidence, however, is contradicted by comparison of blood substances from human beings with those from chimpanzees, indicating the divergence was far more recent—perhaps only seven million years ago. The DNA analysis has tended to support the later dating, and, in fact, recent work by David Reich of Harvard has suggested that chimps and humanoids interbred for hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of years. Even today, chimps’ genetic structure differs from humans’ by only 1.2 percent. While Reich’s hypotheses are still debated, the general belief that genetic analysis will provide important clues about human evolution is shared by most scientists.

虽然关于从猿到人科动物的过渡发生的时间存在争议,但人类学家普遍认为,包括人科动物在内的所有灵长类动物都曾生活在树上,并且在此期间,它们的四肢进化出了强健的四肢,手指和脚趾可以灵活地抓住树枝。大多数灵长类动物,包括长臂猿和猩猩,仍然生活在树上,但大猩猩和人类一样,生活在地面上。黑猩猩睡在树窝里,但白天大部分时间都在地面上度过。显然,它们下降到地面的原因之一是体型的增大。大猩猩的体重通常为 400 到 600 磅,对于树上生活来说太重了。即使是黑猩猩,除非精心选择树枝,否则也无法在树枝间荡来荡去。类人猿可以用两条腿走路,但它们还没有达到人类的直立姿势,通常用四肢行走。

Although there is a dispute as to when the transition from ape to hominid occurred, anthropologists generally agree that all the primates, including hominids, once lived in trees and that during this period they developed limbs of great strength, with prehensile fingers and toes for grasping branches. Most primates, including the gibbon and the orangutan, still live in trees, but gorillas, like humans, live on the ground. Chimpanzees sleep in tree nests but spend much of the daytime on the ground. Apparently, one reason for this descent to the ground was their increase in size. Gorillas typically weigh from 400 to 600 pounds and are far too heavy for life in the trees. Even chimpanzees are too heavy to swing about through the branches unless they choose them with care. The great apes can walk on two legs but they have not achieved the humans erect posture and normally walk on all fours.

人类与猿类之间最重要的生理差异或许在于大脑的大小和复杂程度。在不同动物物种之间,智力似乎通常与大脑重量(尤其是其相对于身体的重量)之间存在某种关联。但最重要的因素是大脑的组织结构。大尺寸的主要优势似乎在于它为更多细胞和更复杂的机制提供了空间。平均而言,黑猩猩比人类体型小,但有些黑猩猩的体重可达120或130磅。体型较小的人类大脑重量通常约为同等体重黑猩猩的三倍,而正常人类大脑皮层(大脑中最与记忆和思维相关的部分)的细胞数量可能是典型猿类大脑皮层的十倍。如今,似乎几乎毫无疑问,复杂的大脑是人类获得大量记忆、使用文字符号和进行抽象思维能力的重要基础。

Perhaps the most important physical difference between human beings and apes is in the size and complexity of the brain. Between various animal species, there seems as a rule to be some relationship between intelligence and the weight of the brain, especially its weight in relation to the body. But the most important factor is the organization of the brain. The chief advantage of large size seems to be that it provides space for additional cells and for more complex mechanisms. On average, chimpanzees are smaller than humans, but some weigh as much as 120 or 130 pounds. The brain of a small human typically weighs about three times that of a chimpanzee of the same body weight, and a normal human cerebral cortex, the part of the brain most concerned with memory and thought, may have ten times as many cells as the cerebral cortex of a typical ape. Today, there seems little doubt that this complex brain is an essential basis of the human power to acquire a vast store of memories, to use word symbols, and to carry on abstract thought.

就行为而言,猿类与人类既有惊人的相似之处,也有显著的差异。与人类一样,猿类也有家庭生活,并会照顾幼崽。它们有情绪反应,能够表达感激和羞愧,而且通常很善于社交,合作。它们有时会相互竞争,有时也会玩耍。某些黑猩猩对各种行为的训练反应良好,例如吸烟、骑自行车、用刀叉进食和用奶瓶喝水。它们还表现出解决需要理性判断的问题的能力。然而,尽管如此,人类的这些成就也存在局限性,这无疑证明了人类拥有更优越的智力品质。

With respect to behavior, there are both striking similarities and striking differences between apes and human beings. Like humans, apes have family life and care for their young. They have emotional responses, can express gratitude and shame, and often are sociable and cooperative. On occasion, they compete with one another, and sometimes they engage in play. Certain chimpanzees have responded well to training in various types of behavior such as smoking, riding a bicycle, eating with a knife and fork, and drinking from a bottle. They have also shown ability to solve problems requiring reasoned judgment. But to all these accomplishments, there are limits that argue unmistakably for the superior intellectual qualities of human beings.

这幅十八世纪狄德罗百科全书中的图画展现了当时一些人对早期类人生物的想象。 © Wikipedia

This eighteenth-century drawing from Diderot’s Encyclopédic shows what some people at that time imagined early human like creatures to have looked like. © Wikipedia

体质人类学家面临的问题是填补人类进化过程的空白,如果前面讨论的间断平衡进化理论是正确的,那么解释为什么这些变化会在那时发生。在上个世纪,特别是自 20 世纪 30 年代以来,人类学家在解决这个难题方面取得了巨大进步。考古发现将我们的祖先追溯到大约六百万年前,各种各样的早期类人猿化石被赋予了令人生畏的名字,如Africanus ramidus、ZinjanthropusOrrorin Tugenesis。化石发现仍在不断发生。2014 年,南非的研究人员发现了一个地下骨场,里面有超过 1,500 块早期类人猿分支的骨头碎片。

The problem for physical anthropologists is to fill in the gaps of precisely how humans evolved and, if the evolutionary theory of punctuated equilibrium discussed earlier is true, to explain why the changes occurred when they did. In the last century, and especially since the 1930s, anthropologists have made tremendous strides in solving the puzzle. Archaeological finds date our ancestors back about six million years, and a wide variety of early hominid fossils have been given forbidding names such as Africanus ramidus, Zinjanthropus, and Orrorin Tugenesis. Fossil finds are still occurring. In 2014, researchers in South Africa found a subterranean bone yard with more than 1,500 bone fragments of an offshoot of early hominids.

确定现代人类历史起源的关键因素之一是这些早期类人猿何时开始使用工具。已发现的带有骨骼的工具可追溯到330万年前。这类类人猿被称为“能人”,因为“能人”的意思是“制造者”。

A key element in determining when to date the start of modern human history is when these early hominids began using tools. Discoveries of tools with skeletons have been dated from 3.3 million years ago. This group of hominids is called Homo habilis because habilis means “maker.”

DNA证据与人类的起源

DNA Evidence and the Descent of Humans

直到最近,人类史前史的故事都是通过化石的发现来讲述的。通过仔细分析,这些化石与其他化石进行比较,寻找相似之处。基于这些化石之间的差异,体质人类学家会拼凑出一个人类史前史的故事。由于化石数量极其有限,这有点像用几页四分之一英寸的碎片来讲述一本一百页厚的书里的故事。这些故事需要丰富的想象力才能完整地呈现,而且坦白地说,很多故事都包含着大量的推测。

Until recently, the story of human prehistory was told through the discovery of fossils, which, by careful analysis, were compared with other fossils for similarities. Based on differences among those fossils, physical anthropologists would piece together a story of human prehistory. Since fossils were highly limited, it was a bit like telling a story from a hundred-page book with only quarter-inch scraps of a few pages. The stories required an imaginative mind to make them complete, and, to be quite honest, much of the stories involved significant conjecture.

在过去十年中,史前史故事的性质有所改变。利用所谓的“高通量 DNA 测序”,科学家们为了解史前史打开了一扇新的窗户。他们现在可以分析人类和史前人类的基因是如何变化的,并将它们与现在的基因进行比较。其结果是一个更准确(有时非常不同)的史前史故事。通过研究古代化石的 DNA,他们发现史前人类之间的流动比以前认为的要多得多,而且地球上几乎没有人的线性遗传不涉及与多个人类祖先群体的交流。从历史开始,人类和史前人类就一直在迁徙和融合。

In the last decade, the nature of prehistory storytelling has changed somewhat. Using what is called “high-throughput DNA sequencing,” scientists have a new window into that prehistory They can now analyze how the genes of humans and prehumans have changed, and compare them with what they are currently. The result is a more accurate (and sometimes quite different) story of that prehistory. What they are finding by studying the DNA of ancient fossils is that there was much more movement among prehistoric humans than previously thought, and that almost no one anywhere on the planet has a linear heritage that does not involve interchange with multiple groups of human ancestors. Humans and prehumans have been moving around and blending together from the beginning of history.

尚存的差距尽管在化石发现和 DNA 分析方面取得了进展,我们对祖先的认识仍然存在重大差距,即使是那些对该领域有着详细和技术把握的专家也是如此。例如,在这期间发生了什么?这些类人猿生物是现代人类的祖先还是仅仅是猿人的祖先?人类起源于多个地方还是只在一个地方,然后从那里分散到世界各地?这些问题仍然没有答案,而且可能永远没有答案。然而,基因研究正在带来更具体的答案。最新的基因数据表明,所有人类都来自非洲,并沿着图 2.4所示的路线遍布世界各地。

Remaining Gaps Despite advances in fossil discoveries and DNA analysis, significant gaps remain in our knowledge of our ancestors, even among experts with their detailed and technical grasp of the subject. For instance, what happened during the intervening years? Were these apelike beings the predecessors of modern humans or only of apes? Did humans start out in a number of places or in only one, from which they dispersed throughout the world? These questions still are unanswered and probably always will be. However, genetic studies are leading to more specific answers. The latest genetic data suggest that all humans descended from Africa and spread throughout the world along the lines shown in Figure 2.4.

从原始人类到智人已知最早的人类物种——能人就是从这些早期祖先中演化而来的。能人的大脑比这些早期祖先更大,但牙齿更小,他们可能制造了石器和其他石制品。

From Hominids to Homo Sapiens The earliest known species of Homo (human), Homo habilis, emerged from these early ancestors. Homo habilis had a larger brain but smaller teeth than these early ancestors and probably produced stone tools and other stone objects.

随着我们接近本世纪,我们的信息有所增加,但尽管取得了实质性进展,信息仍然粗略且不完整。1891年,一项重要的发现在爪哇,荷兰外科医生尤金·杜波依斯博士发现了谜团的另一块碎片:直立人直立人生活在大约180万年前,可能最晚到25万年前,他们是一名懂得使用火的猎人。

As we move closer to our own century, our information increases somewhat, but despite substantial progress, it is still sketchy and incomplete. An important find occurred in 1891 in Java when a Dutch surgeon, Dr. Eugene Dubois, unearthed another piece of the puzzle: Homo erectus. Homo erectus lived from about 1.8 million years ago to possibly as recently as 250,000 years ago and was a hunter who knew how to use fire.

图2.4早期人类迁徙。

Figure 2.4Early human migration.

据信,大约180万年前,直立人能人进化而来,在非洲发展,并在大约100万年前迁徙到欧洲和亚洲。直立人的大脑比能人更大,牙齿则更小。牙齿尺寸的减小表明,随着人类饮食转向水果等较软的食物,以及越来越多的肉类,他们对坚果和种子等需要强健牙齿和颌骨的硬质食物的依赖正在减少。直立人似乎非常强壮,这有利于狩猎。

It is believed that about 1.8 million years ago in Africa, Homo erectus developed from Homo habilis and then dispersed to Europe and Asia about a million years ago. Homo erectus's brain was even larger and the teeth even smaller than Homo habilis’s. The lessening of tooth size indicates that dependence on hard food such as nuts and seeds, which requires powerful teeth and jaws, was decreasing as human diet veered toward softer foods such as fruit and, increasingly, meat. Homo erectus seems to have been very strong—which would have facilitated hunting.

在直立人的不可生物降解废物中,发现了比能人制造的更为复杂的物品,例如斧头,并且有证据表明,从灰烬和烧焦的材料中可以发现,在直立人存在的末期,直立人学会了使用火。

Among Homo erectus’s nonbiodegradable waste are found more sophisticated objects than Homo habilis made, such as axes, and there is evidence, from ashes and charred material, that toward the end of Homo erectus’s existence, Homo erectus learned to use fire.

1997年,两位西班牙古生物学家何塞·玛丽亚·贝穆德斯·德卡斯特罗(Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro)和胡安·路易斯·阿苏阿加(Juan Luis Arsuaga)宣布,他们对在西班牙发现的80万年前化石的研究使他们相信,先行人(Homo antecessor ,指比其更早出现的人)是一个独立的物种,可能是尼安德特人和智人(下文将讨论)的共同祖先。他们推测,在西班牙北部发现的化石代表了来自非洲的移民。

In 1997, two Spanish paleontologists, Jose Maria Bermudez de Castro and Juan Luis Arsuaga, announced that their study of 800,000-year-old fossils found in Spain had led them to believe that Homo antecessor (man who goes before) was a separate species who was a possible common ancestor of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens (discussed next). They speculated that the fossils they found in northern Spain represent emigrants from Africa.

直立人似乎在近50万年前就灭绝了。其原因尚不清楚。尽管直立人的遗物比其祖先更为复杂,但在超过一百万年的时间里,其遗物并没有表现出太大的变化。因此,一种理论认为,直立可能过于保守和僵化,无法适应不断变化的环境。

Homo erectus seems to have become extinct nearly 500,000 years ago. The reasons are not at all clear. Artifacts of Homo erectus, although more sophisticated than those of their predecessors, do not show much change over more than a million years. Thus, one theory holds that Homo erectus may have been too conservative and inflexible to adapt to changing conditions.

另一种理论认为直立人确实发生了变化,分成了两个分支。一个分支是尼安德特人,另一个分支是现代人类智人智人是一群人科动物,他们开始与前辈有所不同,因为他们拥有更大的大脑并且制造了更优质的工具。智人(推理人)是由比直立人更高度发达的人组成的物种。然而,早期智人与直立人有许多共同的特征。例如,他们似乎无法适应恶劣的气候,或者比直立人更容易找到食物。

Another theory is that Homo erectus did change, separating into two branches. One branch was the Neanderthals and the other was the modern human, Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens is a group of hominids who began to differ from their predecessors by their larger brains and by the better-quality tools they made. Homo sapiens (reasoning man) was a species composed of people more highly developed than Homo erectus. Early Homo sapiens, however, shared many characteristics with Homo erectus. They seem to have been unable, for instance, to adapt to harsh climates, or to find food more easily than did Homo erectus.

智人首次出现在非洲和欧洲的时间与直立人消失的时间大致相同。我们再次看到,这些新人类的大脑比他们所取代的人类更大,而且他们与直立人差异巨大,以至于被归类为一个新物种。今天所有现代人类都属于这个物种。欧洲和非洲的遗址出土了一些这些人类祖先的化石,年代大约在20万到30万年前,但根据基因证据,他们可能早在……就存在了。比化石记录早了80万年。2003年在埃塞俄比亚发现的现代人化石与近期关于人类出现时间和地点的基因研究结果相符。这些研究支持了“走出非洲”的替代理论,即人类在晚期迁徙过程中最终取代了当时世界上大多数其他类人物种,例如尼安德特人。

Homo sapiens first appeared in Africa and Europe about the same time that Homo erectus was disappearing. Once again, we see the new people displaying larger brains than the people they were replacing, and they differed so much from Homo erectus that they were assigned to a new species. It is the species to which all modern human beings belong today. European and African sites have yielded some fossils of these human ancestors ranging roughly from 200,000 to 300,000 years old, but according to genetic evidence, they may have existed as long ago as 800,000 years—earlier than the fossil record. A 2003 fossil find of modern man in Ethiopia fits with recent genetic studies of the time and place of the emergence of humankind. These support the replacement theory—“Out of Africa”—that a late migration of humans eventually supplanted most other humanlike species around the world at the time, such as Neanderthals.

新发现层出不穷。当这些新发现与化石测年技术的进步相结合时,我们对历史的理解也在不断更新。例如,2017年,在摩洛哥发现的新化石表明,智人的生活年代比之前认为的早了大约10万年。这些发现表明,智人最初在很长一段时间内遍布整个非洲,而不是像之前认为的那样只分布在东非。最近在印度尼西亚和菲律宾发现的化石被认为是此前未知的类人猿新物种。DNA测试以及数学计算技术使研究人员能够探索这些类人猿与现代智人之间的联系,并由此越来越深入地认识到,人类的历史是多维的,远比我们之前所讲述的标准故事复杂得多。

There are continually new discoveries. When these new discoveries are combined with advances in fossil dating techniques, our understanding of the history is continually being modified. For example, in 2017, a new fossil find in Morocco suggested that homo sapiens lived around 100,000 years earlier than previously thought. These finds suggest that homo sapiens first spread all through Africa over an extended period, rather than only in East Africa as had been thought before. Recent fossil discoveries in Indonesia and the Philippines are seen as new species of hominids that were previously unknown. DNA tests along with mathematical computational techniques are allowing researchers to explore these hominids connection with modern homo sapiens, and the result is an increasing understanding that humankind's background is multidimensional and far more complicated than the standard story just told.

尼安德特人距今超过10万年的遗骸数量不多。然而,我们确实知道,大约10万年前,进化网络产生了与现代人类非常相似的尼安德特人。尽管如此相似,但最近的化石证据和基因研究强烈表明,尼安德特人并非我们的祖先。相反,他们可能与现代人类拥有共同的祖先。如果现代特征在16万年前的非洲就已经存在,那么我们不可能是尼安德特人这样的物种的后代。

Neanderthals Remains from periods longer than 100,000 years ago are few. We do know, however, that the evolutionary network produced the Neanderthals, who bore a close resemblance to modern human beings, about 100,000 years ago. Despite this close resemblance, the recent fossil evidence and genetic studies strongly suggest that the Neanderthals were not our ancestors. Instead, they probably shared a common ancestor with modern humans. If modern features already existed in Africa 160,000 years ago, we could not have descended from a species like the Neanderthals.

尼安德特人的名字源于德国尼安德山谷,1856年,他们存在的第一个证据在那里被发现。他们生活在欧洲,后来迁徙到亚洲,尽管一些研究人员认为他们是在亚洲独立发展起来的。从体型上看,他们与所有其他现代人(无论是已灭绝的还是现代的)都不同,他们的头部形状,以及奇怪的是,他们的拇指长度——大约与其他手指一样长。

Neanderthals get their name from the Neander Valley in Germany, where in 1856 the first evidence of their existence was found. They lived in Europe and spread to Asia, although a few researchers believe they developed independently in Asia. Physically, they differ from all other people, modern or extinct, in the shape of their heads and, strangely, in the length of their thumbs, which were about as long as their other fingers.

人们曾认为尼安德特人是愚笨、懒散、全身长满毛发的穴居人。但这种说法仅仅基于一具化石,现代学术研究已证明这具化石属于一位年老、患病且受伤的男性。他去世时大约四十五岁——在当时的人类中已经非常高龄了。健康的尼安德特人可能直立行走。在尼安德特人遗址发现的物品表明,尼安德特人能够制造复杂的工具。他们头骨的特征表明他们可能能够说话,尽管可能不像现代人那样能发出所有种类的声音。遗址还表明,他们并不一定生活在洞穴中,但如果他们确实生活在洞穴中,他们很可能改造了洞穴,使其更适合居住。有时他们会建造庇护所,而不是在洞穴中定居。1996年,在斯洛文尼亚一处尼安德特人遗址进行挖掘的科学家宣布,他们发现了一种疑似乐器的遗骸——一支由熊骨制成的笛子。

It used to be thought that Neanderthals were dim-witted, slouching cavemen completely covered with hair. But this reputation is based on just one fossil, which modern scholarship has proved happens to be that of an old, diseased, and injured man. He was approximately forty or forty-five years old when he died—very old for people at that time. Healthy Neanderthals probably walked erect. Objects found at Neanderthal sites show that Neanderthals could make complex tools. The characteristics of their skulls suggest that they probably could speak, although perhaps not with the full range of sounds that modern humans make. Sites also show that they did not necessarily live in caves, but, if they did, they likely altered the caves to make them more livable. Sometimes they built shelters rather than settled in caves. In 1996, scientists digging at a Neanderthal site in Slovenia announced they had found what appeared to be a musical instrument, a flute made from a bear bone.

正如我们将在后续章节中讨论的那样,语言能力的发展是进化过程中的一大步。(参见关于人类物种独特性的附框。)它使人类能够进行比不说话的物种更深入的互动,从而促进社会发展。如此一来,它使人类能够更高效地传递关于环境的知识。它也使人类发展出时间、空间和数量的概念,从而创造了符号互动的潜力。

As we will discuss in later chapters, the development of language capability was a major evolutionary step. (See the box on the uniqueness of the human species.) It allowed the species much greater interaction and hence social development than could occur in nonspeaking species. In doing so, it made the passing on of learned knowledge about the environment much more efficient. It also allowed the species to develop concepts of time, space, and quantity, thereby creating the potential for symbolic interaction.

尼安德特人体格强健,但身高略矮——大约五英尺四英寸(约1.63米),比现代人矮。他们额头倾斜,眼窝隆起,鼻子宽大,下颌突出,而且他们的大脑比现代人的平均大脑要大。尼安德特人的遗骸中有一些残疾人或老年人,这足以证明他们的人性,这意味着尼安德特人非常关心他人,并且组织严密,能够为这些经济上不具备生产力的社群成员提供帮助。

The Neanderthals were powerfully built but somewhat shorter—about five feet four inches—than present-day humans. They had sloping foreheads, heavy ridges over the eyes, large wide noses, and protruding jaws, and the Neanderthal brain was larger than that of the average modern person. A tribute to their humanity is the fact that among the buried remains are people who were handicapped or aged, which means that Neanderthals cared enough and were organized enough to provide for these economically unproductive members of their communities.

迄今为止,在距今3.5万至6万年前的时期,尼安德特人遗址的发现寥寥无几。由于这段时期他们似乎也消失了,因此几乎没有证据表明他们为何消失。关于他们消失的原因,各种理论包括:(1) 他们与另一个族群克罗马农人(稍后讨论)杂交,最终尼安德特人的特征被克罗马农人完全吸收;(2) 他们与克罗马农人展开斗争,最终被彻底消灭;(3) 他们迁徙到环境过于恶劣、无法生存的地区。最近的基因检测似乎证实,至少在欧洲,尼安德特人是被克罗马农人的基因库所取代,而不是被其吸收。

To date, few Neanderthal sites have been found from the period 35,000-60,000 years ago. Because this is also the period in which they seem to have disappeared, there is little or no evidence of why they disappeared. Theories of what happened include the following: (1) they interbred with another group, Cro-Magnons (discussed later), and eventually Neanderthal characteristics were completely absorbed into Cro-Magnons; (2) they battled with Cro-Magnons in a struggle and were annihilated; and (3) they wandered away into regions that were too environmentally inhospitable for survival. Recent genetic testing seems to confirm, at least in Europe, that Neanderthals were replaced by, rather than absorbed into, the Cro-Magnon gene pool.

克罗马农人是另一群起源不明但可能是智人直接祖先的人种,他们就是克罗马农人。克罗马农人的名字源于1868年在附近发现首批克罗马农人样本的法国村庄。克罗马农人体型高大、体格健壮,颅骨容量与现代人类相当。他们和其他早期现代智人早在尼安德特人消失之前就已存在。

Cro-Magnons Another group of people, whose origins are uncertain but who may have been the immediate precursors of Homo sapiens, were Cro-Magnons. The name comes from the French village near which the first specimens were found in 1868. Cro-Magnons were anatomically modern, tall, well-built people with skull capacity comparable to that of present-day humans. They and other early anatomically modern sapiens existed before Neanderthals disappeared.

在西欧,没有发现任何距今超过 3 万年的克罗马农人骨骼,但考古学家认为,4 万年前的工具一定是现代人制造的在西欧多处地区均有发现。克罗马农人似乎在约35000年前才开始繁荣。他们的遗骸在欧洲多处遗址均有发现,在近东、中国、印度尼西亚、澳大利亚和非洲也发现了少量遗骸。这些遗骸表明,他们不如尼安德特人强壮,可能是因为他们不需要强壮。例如,力量较弱意味着所需食物较少,因此相同总量的食物可以养活更多的人口。

In western Europe, no Cro-Magnon skeletons have been found older than 30,000 years, but 40,000-year-old tools that archaeologists believe must have been made by modern people have been found at a number of western European locations. Cro-Magnons appear to have flourished only beginning about 35,000 years ago. Their remains have been found at various European sites and, in smaller numbers, in the Near East, China, Indonesia, Australia, and Africa. The remains indicate that they were not as strong as Neanderthals, probably because they did not need to be. Less strength, for instance, means that less food was necessary, so the same total amount of food could support a larger population.

结论

Conclusion

现代人与其祖先的区别不仅仅在于体貌特征。大约35000年前,他们就展现出了文化的复杂性,例如,至今仍可见的洞穴壁画,尤其是在法国南部和西班牙北部。我们越接近自己的时代,就越能发现诸如通过制作和使用衣物以及建造住所来应对寒冷气候等策略的证据。此外,还有证据表明,当时的社会组织日益复杂,甚至存在一些与相距九十英里的群体进行有限的贸易。

Modern people are distinguished from their ancestors by more than physical characteristics. By about 35,000 years ago, they were exhibiting cultural sophistication, for example, in the cave paintings that can still be seen, especially in southern France and northern Spain. The closer we come to our own times, the more evidence we find of strategies such as coping with cold climates by the making and use of clothing and the building of shelters. There is also evidence of increasingly complex social organization and even some limited trade with groups as much as ninety miles apart.

正如许多人类学理论一样,这些发现也存在争议。例如,一种年代测定方法就颇具争议,它将人类遗骸的年代与与人类遗骸一起发现的器物最后一次加热的时间联系起来。关于人类的发展,还有无数悬而未决的问题。例如,自然选择理论中,什么解释了人类行为的各种出现?大多数复杂的行为是否大致同时出现,还是逐渐发展?由于这个引人入胜的领域仍在继续研究,这些问题中的至少一些,以及你可能想到的其他问题的答案,很可能有一天会被发现,或者至少会被推断出来。

As is true of much anthropological theory, there is debate about these findings. For instance, one method of dating was a controversial technique that relates the age of the human remains to the detection of when the artifacts discovered with the human remains were last heated. There are innumerable unanswered questions about the development of human beings. For example, what in the theory of natural selection explains the various emergences of human behavior? And did most sophisticated behavior appear at roughly the same time, or were there successive advances? Because work continues in this fascinating field, it is likely that the answers to at least some of these questions, and to other questions you might think of, will one day be discovered, or at least be deduced.

克罗马农人和尼安德特人一样,都是狩猎采集者;他们四处游荡,寻找食物和适宜生存的气候。正如我们在下一章中看到的,大约11000年前,情况发生了改变。这种改变源于科技的发展。

The Cro-Magnons, like the Neanderthals, were hunters and gatherers; they roamed from place to place in search of food and survivable weather. As we see in the next chapter, about 11,000 years ago that changed. The change was due to a technological development.

至此,我们停止对人类起源的思考,将人类学的发展阶段置于人类学家所称的石器时代,即始于60多万年前,持续至公元前1万年左右的时期。我们之所以选择石器时代,并非因为石器时代的人类在体格上与现代人类存在差异,而是因为石器时代的技术发展显著改变了人与人之间的交往方式。我们留给你们一个问题:这些技术发展究竟是什么?

At this point, we stop our consideration of the origins of human beings, leaving the development in what anthropologists call the Stone Age, a period beginning more than 600,000 years ago and lasting to about 10,000 BC. We make this break not because Stone Age humans were physically different from modern human beings, but because of the technological developments of the Stone Age, which significantly modified the way individuals interrelate. We leave you with the question: What were those technological developments?

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 达尔文的进化论以适者生存或自然选择为中心;有益的突变使得进化成为可能。
  • Darwin’s theory of evolution centers on the survival of the fittest or natural selection; beneficial mutation makes evolution possible.
  • 基因包含构成生物体的基本单元——DMA。DNA 包含决定生物体发育的密码。
  • Genes contain DMA, the building block of living organisms. DNA contains the codes that determine an organism's development.
  • 社会生物学家认为,降低生存机会的行为最终将从人类行为中消失。
  • Sociobiologists argue that behavior that decreases chances of survival will eventually be eliminated from human behavior.
  • 进化是间断的还是连续的仍存在很大争议。
  • Whether evolution is punctuated or continuous is still much in debate.
  • 人类和猿类的进化分歧发生在两千五百万年前。
  • The evolutionary split between human beings and apes occurred more than twenty-five million years ago.
  • DNA 证据为人类的起源提供了巨大的见解。
  • DNA evidence is adding enormous insight into the decent of humans.
  • 对人类起源的探索已经导致了许多化石发现,但尚未得出明确的结论:“这就是人类的起源。”
  • The search for human origins has led to many fossil finds but not to a definitive statement: “This is where human beings began.”
  • 克罗马农人可能是智人的直接祖先。
  • Cro-Magnons may have been the immediate precursors of Homo sapiens.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 等位基因(26)
  • alleles (26)
  • 克罗马农人 (39)
  • Cro-Magnons (39)
  • DNA(28)
  • DNA (28)
  • 显性等位基因 (26)
  • dominant allele (26)
  • 表观遗传学(28)
  • epigenetics (28)
  • 进化(25)
  • evolution (25)
  • 基因(26)
  • genes (26)
  • 基因工程(28)
  • genetic engineering (28)
  • 遗传学(26)
  • genetics (26)
  • 类人猿(35)
  • hominids (35)
  • 祖先人(37)
  • Homo antecessor (37)
  • 直立人(37)
  • Homo erectus (37)
  • 能人(36)
  • Homo habilis (36)
  • 智人(37)
  • Homo sapiens (37)
  • 智能设计(33)
  • intelligent design (33)
  • 多级组选择(29)
  • multilevel group selection (29)
  • 突变(26)
  • mutation (26)
  • 自然选择(26)
  • natural selection (26)
  • 尼安德特人(38)
  • Neanderthals (38)
  • 灵长类动物(34)
  • primates (34)
  • 间断平衡(31)
  • punctuated equilibrium (31)
  • 隐性等位基因(26)
  • recessive allele (26)
  • 科学创造论(32)
  • scientific creationism (32)
  • 社会生物学(30)
  • sociobiology (30)
  • 物种(35)
  • species (35)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 为什么说人是社会性动物?
  2. Why do we say the human being is a social creature?
  3. 为什么人类、猿和猴子都被归入灵长类动物的生物序列中?
  4. Why are humans, apes, and monkeys all placed in the biological order of primates?
  5. 解释达尔文的进化论。
  6. Explain Darwin’s theory of evolution.
  7. 表观遗传学和多层次群体选择如何改变达尔文的进化论?
  8. How do epigenetics and multilevel group selection modify Darwin’s theory of how evolution works?
  9. 科学家能创造生命吗?你认为基因工程有哪些可能性?
  10. Can scientists create life? What possibilities can you see in genetic engineering?
  11. 社会生物学如何解释人类行为的发展?
  12. How does sociobiology explain the development of human behavior?
  13. 什么是间断平衡理论?它为什么重要?
  14. What is the theory of punctuated equilibrium, and why is it important?
  15. 科学创世论应该在学校里教授吗?为什么?
  16. Should scientific creationism be taught in schools? Why or why not?
  17. 你认为类人生物在地球上出现的时间是多久?为什么确定具体日期如此困难?你认为我们为什么一直在努力尝试?
  18. How long ago do you think humanlike creatures appeared on earth? Why is it so hard to determine the date, and why do you think we keep trying?
  19. 人类最早的祖先是谁?他们与我们有何相似之处?又有何不同?
  20. Who are some of the earliest precursors of human beings? What makes them like us? What makes them unlike us?
  21. 人类拥有哪三种能力,比其他所有生物都更具优势?人类是独一无二的吗?
  22. What three abilities gave humans advantages over all other creatures? Are humans unique?
  23. 在www.sci-news.com/news/othersciences/anthropology/paleoanthropology网站上,选择一篇关于古人类学最新发现的文章。发现了什么?在哪里发现的?为什么这项发现如此重要?
  24. Pick one of the articles about a recent discovery in paleoanthropology listed on www.sci-news.com/news/othersciences/anthropology/paleoanthropology. What was found? Where was it found? Why is this discovery important?
  25. 请访问www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp4Vsq4jRFY观看视频。什么是同源结构?什么是退化器官?
  26. Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=xp4Vsq4jRFY and watch the video. What are homologous structures? What are vestigial organs?
  27. 根据http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/chimp-genome上的信息,尽管人类和黑猩猩有 98.7% 的基因相同,但是是什么让他们如此不同呢?
  28. According to the information at http://discovermagazine.com/2006/apr/chimp-genome, even though humans and chimps share 98.7 percent of their genes, what makes them so different?
  29. 请访问www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5UsRpd0IPc观看本·斯坦因纪录片《被驱逐:不允许有智慧》的预告片,该片探讨了达尔文主义以及他对智能设计论压制的看法。智能设计论是否是进化论的替代方案?科学界如何解释他们对进化论的厌恶?
  30. Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5UsRpd0IPc and watch the trailer to Ben Steins documentary, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” on Darwinism and what he considers the suppression of intelligent design. Is it an alternative to the theory of evolution, and how does the scientific community explain their dislike of this theory?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 请阅读短文:www.sfgate.com/news/article/Theory-still-rocks-scientists-equilibrium-2817468.php。有哪些例子可以作为间断平衡的证据?这些例子是否都与一种进化机制有关?
  2. Read the short article at www.sfgate.com/news/article/Theory-still-rocks-scientists-equilibrium-2817468.php. What are some of the examples given as evidence for punctuated equilibrium? Is one mechanism of evolution singled out for these cases?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • Begun, David R.,《真实的人猿星球:人类起源新故事》,新泽西州普林斯顿:普林斯顿大学出版社,2016 年。
  • Begun, David R., The Real Planet of the Apes: A New Story of Human Origins, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016.
  • 布朗,珍妮特和杰里米·德席尔瓦,《一个最有趣的问题:达尔文的《人类的由来》对人类进化的正确和错误解读》,新泽西州普林斯顿:普林斯顿大学出版社,2021 年。
  • Brown, Janet and Jeremy DeSilva, A Most Interesting Problem, What Darwin’s Descent of Man Got Right and Wrong about Human Evolution, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021.
  • 查尔斯·达尔文,《物种起源》,欧文、夏洛特和威廉·欧文编辑,纽约:昂格尔,1959 年(首次出版于 1859 年)。
  • Darwin, Charles, On the Origin of Species, Irvine, Charlotte, and William Irvine, eds., New York: Ungar, 1959 (first published in 1859).
  • Doudna, Jennifer 和 Samuel Sternberg,《创造的裂缝:基因编辑和控制进化的不可思议的力量》,纽约:霍顿·米夫林·哈考特出版社,2017 年。
  • Doudna, Jennifer, and Samuel Sternberg, A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.
  • 戈特沙尔,乔纳森,《讲故事的动物:故事如何让我们成为人类》,马萨诸塞州波士顿:Mariner Books,2013 年。
  • Gottschall, Jonathan, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, Boston, MA: Mariner Books, 2013.
  • Gurche,John,《塑造人类:科学、艺术和想象力如何帮助我们理解我们的起源》,康涅狄格州纽黑文:耶鲁大学出版社,2013 年。
  • Gurche, John, Shaping Humanity: How Science, Art, and Imagination Help Us Understand Our Origins, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013.
  • 哈拉里,尤瓦尔·诺亚,《人类简史》,纽约:哈珀柯林斯出版社,2015 年。
  • Harari, Yuval Noah, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, New York: Harper Collins, 2015.
  • 赫斯、伊丽莎白、尼姆·黑猩猩斯基:想成为人类的黑猩猩,纽约:班塔姆出版社,2008 年。
  • Hess, Elizabeth, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, New York: Bantam, 2008.
  • 唐纳德·约翰逊和凯特·王,《露西的遗产:探索人类起源》,纽约:百老汇,2010 年。
  • Johanson, Donald, and Kate Wong, Lucy's Legacy: The Quest for Human Origins, New York: Broadway, 2010.
  • 马克斯,乔纳森,《98% 黑猩猩意味着什么:猿、人类及其基因》,加利福尼亚州伯克利:加州大学出版社,2003 年。
  • Marks, Jonathan, What It Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People, and Their Genes, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.
  • 梅雷迪斯·马丁,《生于非洲:探索人类生命的起源》,纽约:公共事务出版社,2011 年。
  • Meredith, Martin, Born in Africa: The Quest for the Origins of Human Life, New York: Public Affairs, 2011.
  • 莉迪亚·派恩,《七具骷髅:世界上最著名人类化石的进化》,纽约:维京出版社,2016 年。
  • Pyne, Lydia, Seven Skeletons: The Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils, New York: Viking, 2016.
  • 斯特林格,克里斯,《孤独的幸存者:我们如何成为地球上唯一的人类》,纽约:时代图书,2012 年。
  • Stringer, Chris, Lone Survivors: How We Came to Be the Only Humans on Earth, New York: Times Books, 2012.
  • 伊恩·塔特索尔 (Ian Tattersall),《地球的主人:寻找人类的起源》,纽约:麦克米伦,2012 年。
  • Tattersall, Ian, Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins, New York: Macmillan, 2012.
  • 伊恩·塔特索尔 (Ian Tattersall),《摇摇晃晃的哥萨克奇案》,帕尔格雷夫·麦克米伦出版社,2015 年。
  • Tattersall, Ian, The Strange Case of Rickety Cossack, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第三西方社会的起源

chapter 3Origins of Western Society

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-3

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 解释为什么动物驯化和土地控制是创造我们今天所知社会的核心发展
  • Explain why the domestication of animals and control of land were central developments that created society as we know it today
  • 追溯从美索不达米亚和埃及到今天的现代文明发展
  • Trace the development of modern civilization from Mesopotamia and Egypt to today
  • 解释现代文明的希腊和罗马起源
  • Explain the Greek and Roman origins of modern civilization
  • 区分中世纪的三个时期
  • Distinguish three periods of the Middle Ages
  • 解释文艺复兴对现代文明的重要性
  • Explain the importance of the Renaissance to modern civilization
  • 定义革命时代
  • Define the Age of Revolutions

在本书的其余部分,我们将考察并对比不同社会文化的起源、发展和运作方式,以便更好地理解现代问题。然而,此刻,我们有必要快速回顾一下西方文化的历史和发展。在这段旅程中,你将了解一些促成我们现有社会类型形成的因素。虽然我们一章所能涵盖的内容非常有限,但我们至少可以向你介绍一些我们在描述历史时期时使用的术语。然而,我们这段旅程的主要目的是获得一些历史视角,并利用这些视角来发现不同时期和发展之间的连续性和相似性,而如果我们随意地、个别地审视它们,就会发现它们彼此之间似乎存在差异。

Throughout most of the remainder of this book, we look at and contrast the origins, development, and operation of societies’ cultures so that we can better understand modern problems. At this point, however, it seems advantageous to take a whirlwind tour of history and the development of Western culture. On this tour, you will see some of the influences that have led to the formation of the types of societies we have, and although what we can cover in a chapter is severely limited, we can at least introduce you to some of the terminology we use when we describe historical periods. The chief purpose of our tour, though, is to gain some historical perspective and use it to find continuity and similarities among periods and developments that, if we glance at them casually and individually, seem different from one another.

下一节,我们将带你踏上这段旋风之旅,用半页篇幅涵盖几千年的历史。我们将探讨西方文化的起源,它体现在塑造我们现代社会的社会、政治和经济制度中。

In the next section, we take you on that whirlwind tour, covering millennia in half pages. In doing so, we consider the origins of Western culture as embodied in the social, political, and economic institutions that shape our modern society.

石器时代到农业时代

From the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age

我们在上一章的结尾处设置了一个悬念,指出某些技术发展显著地改变了人类和社会的本质,并询问你是否能猜出石器时代出现了哪些技术发展。如果你猜的是弓箭,那么你猜对了它是由石器时代的人类发明的;但如果你认为正是弓箭导致了社会的重大变革,那就错了。弓箭提高了石器时代人类的狩猎能力,但并没有改变他们日常生活的基本要素。

We ended the last chapter with a cliffhanger, saying some technological development significantly changed the nature of humankind and society, and asking if you could guess what technological developments appeared in the Stone Age. If you guessed the bow and arrow, you were right in guessing that it was developed by humans in the Stone Age, but wrong if you were thinking it was the development that caused the major change in society. The bow and arrow improved Stone Age humans’ ability to hunt but did not change the basics of their daily lives.

然而,另一项技术进步确实从根本上改变了社会。一项核心技术进步创造了我们今天所知的社会,它发生在人类学会了如何控制土地(通过用锄头耕作)和动物(通过驯养动物用于搬运、骑行、牵引,以及系统地进行蛋的喂养)时。人类从石器时代进化到如今的农业时代。农业时代始于约11000年前,最初以储存野生作物为特征,随后发展为耕种土地、驯养动物和建立永久性社区。农业时代改变了大多数人类的生活方式,从游牧狩猎转变为在相对固定的社区中生活。

Another technological development, however, did fundamentally change society. A central development that created society as we know it today occurred when human beings learned that they could exercise control over the land (through cultivation by hoe) and animals (through domestication for carrying, riding, pulling, and the systematic practice of egg gathering and milking). This development moved human beings from the Stone Age to what we call the Age of Agriculture, a period beginning about 11,000 years ago and characterized at first by the storing of wild crops and then by the cultivation of land, domestication of animals, and creation of permanent communities. The Age of Agriculture changed the habits of most human beings from those of roving hunters to those of people living in a more or less fixed community.

这一发展对社会的重要性怎么强调也不为过。人们可以居住在一个地方;他们可以积累更多物质财富,并将它们传给子孙后代。此外,一旦食物充足,他们就可以将时间投入到生活的其他方面。在农业时代,陶器被发明,使储存剩余液体变得更加容易;人们发现了用亚麻和羊毛织布的方法。此外,由于农业和家畜需要持续的照料,人们建造了永久性建筑,通常是成群的。村庄由此诞生。

The importance of this development for society cannot be overemphasized. People could live in one place; they could accumulate more physical items and pass those on to their children. Moreover, once they could be assured of food, they could devote time to other aspects of life. During the Age of Agriculture, pottery was invented, making it easier to store surplus liquids; it was discovered how to make cloth from both flax (linen) and wool. Moreover, because agriculture and domesticated animals required constant care, people built permanent buildings, usually in clusters. Thus began villages.

农业革命在如今的中东和欧洲地区带来了人口的显著增长,但由于当时人们对卫生设施的必要性知之甚少,甚至一无所知,乡村生活滋生了疾病。此外,使农业成为可能的技术进步也使战争更加有效。马匹提供了更便捷的交通工具,弓箭则提供了更强大的攻击手段。考古发掘发现了这一时期的各种武器。虽然许多武器可以用于狩猎,但它们也适用于攻击和阻击攻击者。冲突和卫生设施的匮乏阻止了人口的激增。

The agricultural revolution produced significant population growth in what is now the Middle East and Europe, although village living fostered disease because there was little or no understanding of the need for sanitation. Moreover, the same technological developments that made farming possible also made warfare more effective. Horses provided better transportation, and bows and arrows provided better attack mechanisms. Archaeological excavation has revealed various weapons from this period. Although many could be used in hunting, they are also suitable for attacking and for holding off attackers. Conflict and the lack of sanitation kept the level of population from exploding.

早期文明

Early Civilizations

在此期间,人们逐渐解决了两个对维持和延长人类寿命至关重要的问题:卫生和战争。他们了解到更好的卫生条件如何延长寿命,并开始尝试解决持续不断的战争问题。这些发展在中东最为显著。大约公元前4000年,大量人口开始迁徙到美索不达米亚(今伊拉克)和埃及的低地。在此期间,文字得以发展(约公元前3000年),随之而来的是我们所称的有记载的历史。由于这一发展,我们对这一时期的了解远胜于对已有记载的历史的了解。

Slowly during this period people addressed two issues that are crucial to the preservation and extension of the human life span: sanitation and warfare. They learned how better sanitation led to longer lives, and they began to try to solve the problem of constant fighting. These developments were most pronounced in the Middle East. In approximately 4000 BC, large numbers of people began moving into the lowlands of Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) and Egypt. During this time, writing developed (about 3000 BC), and with it began what we call recorded history. Because of that development, we have a much better knowledge of this period than of prerecorded history.

现代文明的摇篮:美索不达米亚和埃及

The Cradle of Modern Civilization: Mesopotamia and Egypt

虽然我们尚不清楚中东城市发展的原因,但可以推断,这得益于耕作方法的改进,它带来了粮食盈余,也改善了卫生条件。城市一旦出现,便承担了行政、商业和娱乐的功能。为了保护自己免受持续不断的战争侵扰,人们似乎会臣服于一位强大的领导者,而为了获得这种保护,他们必须缴纳一定比例的农作物产出。由此,我们的基本政治制度应运而生,即把人们聚集到按空间和种族划分的单位中,由一个小群体组织和管理。这个群体的努力提供了稳定的环境,使单位中的个人能够工作、娱乐、买卖和规划,因为他们愿意承认并支付行政人员的费用,以维护单位成员之间的和谐,并抵御外来者的入侵,维护和平。

Although we do not know the reason for the development of cities in the Middle East, we can deduce that it was made possible by improved methods of cultivation, which created a surplus of food, and improved sanitation conditions. Once in existence, cities took on the purposes of administration, commerce, and entertainment. It seems likely that in order to protect themselves from constant warfare, individuals submitted to a powerful leader, and for that protection they had to pay a certain percentage of their farm output. Thus began our basic political institution, which is the gathering of people into spatially and ethnically defined units organized and run by a small group. This group’s efforts provide the stability within which individuals in the units can work, play, buy, sell, and plan because they are willing to recognize and pay administrators to enforce accommodation among the members of the units and defend the peace against outsiders.

农业剩余以及防御可能加剧了群体间的战争,因为这引发了剩余粮食分配的问题,并给其他群体提供了掠夺的机会。由于各地争执不下,人们可能意识到,某种停止战争的方法——无论是一个群体战胜所有其他群体,还是各群体达成协议——将使所有人受益。为了实现这些目标,小规模的地区联合起来,形成了或多或少统一的王国。

Agricultural surpluses, as well as defense, probably contributed to fighting between groups, as it created questions about the division of the surplus and the opportunity for other groups to take it away. Because of constant disputes among various localities, it probably became obvious to people that some method of stopping the fighting, either by one group winning over all the others or by groups coming to an agreement, would make everyone better off. To further these ends, small localities coalesced into more or less unified kingdoms.

随着王国的扩张,王国的领导者很可能越来越疏远普通民众。随着这种情况的发生,领导者逐渐被神性所认同,要么被视为神,要么被视为神的代表。早期中东国家的一个特征就是“王神”。而“王神”又任命祭司,由此产生了异教宗教机构。

As the size of a kingdom increased, the leader of the kingdom likely became more and more removed from the ordinary inhabitants. As this happened, the leader became closely identified with divinity, either as a god or as a delegate of a god, and a feature of these early Middle Eastern countries was the king-god. The king-gods, in turn, appointed priests, and thus began pagan religious institutions.

我们看到,在这个过程中,社会组织逐渐演变成军事贵族、祭司阶层,最终形成无地农民组成的劳动阶级。随着国王权力的扩大,他们也控制了土地所有权,土地逐渐从耕种土地的个人手中转移到守护土地的贵族手中。战争造就了最底层的阶级;战败者沦为奴隶。到大约公元前3000年,这个组织趋于稳定;在这个组织中,人们摆脱了仅仅为了活下去的基本挣扎,开始信任、创造并为未来做好准备。如果我们将这一结果称为文明,那么我们可以说,大约公元前3800年,一个名叫苏美尔人的民族已经将美索不达米亚地区(位于今天的伊拉克)文明化了。

We see in this process the organization of society into a military aristocracy, a priesthood, and, finally, a laboring class of landless peasants. As the kings gained power, they also gained control of the ownership of land, which was gradually transferred from individuals who farmed the land to the nobility who protected the land. Wars created the lowest class; the captured losers in a war became slaves. By about 3000 bc, this organization had become stable; within it, people, freed from the basic struggle merely to live another day, could begin to trust, create, and provide for the future. If we name the result civilization, we may say that by about 3800 bc, a group called the Sumerians had civilized the Mesopotamian area, which is in modern-day Iraq.

组织的存在需要将其规则编纂成法。要做到这一点,人们必须认识到,所有正在发生的事情都确实在进行,并且这些活动之间存在着一定的秩序。例如,当一个孩子被谋杀时,他的父母可能会感到愤怒,并试图进行某种报复,这会导致复仇,进而引发复仇,形成一个个人报复的循环。如果能够以某种方式制定包含复仇的规则,冲动杀人行为就能减少。要做到这一点,就必须有人记录这些规则,以便领导者和臣民都能了解并遵守。

To have an organization requires codifying its rules. To do that, one must recognize that what has been going on has in fact been going on and that a certain order exists in those activities. For example, when a child was murdered, the parents probably became angry and attempted some type of revenge, which brought on revenge for revenge in a cycle of individual retribution. If rules that incorporated the revenge could somehow be established, impulsive killing could be reduced. To do that, someone had to record those rules so that they could be known and followed, by both the leaders and the subjects.

汉谟拉比法典雕像。 © Jake Lyell/Alamy Stock Photo

Code of Hammurabi statue. © Jake Lyell/Alamy Stock Photo

《汉谟拉比法典》是一部早期法律法规,由美索不达米亚国王汉谟拉比于约4000年前制定。该法典确立了“以眼还眼”的报复制度,并融合了禁止欺骗无助者等人道主义规则。

The Code of Hammurabi is an early collection of rules, or laws, set up by King Hammurabi of Mesopotamia about 4,000 years ago. The code set up an “eye for an eye” system of retribution, combined with humanitarian rules such as prohibitions against defrauding the helpless.

美索不达米亚的政治组织未能持久;另一群文明程度较低、更具战争精神的民族很快征服了苏美尔人。这群人就是闪米特人。尽管闪米特人赢得了战争,但他们并没有赢得文化竞争,他们的文化很快就被苏美尔文化吸收。

The Mesopotamian political organization did not last; another group of individuals, less civilized and more warlike, soon overran the Sumerians. This group was the Semites. Even though the Semites won their war, they did not win the cultural competition, and their culture was soon absorbed into the Sumerian culture.

随着闪米特人融入美索不达米亚文化,另一种与美索不达米亚文化相似的文化在埃及蓬勃发展。与美索不达米亚社会一样,埃及社会也由一位神王统治。由于其优越的地理位置,埃及免受敌对入侵(海洋和沙漠使入侵者难以威胁埃及)。这种免受入侵的条件,加上温暖可预测的气候和尼罗河肥沃的农田,造就了一个生产力极高的社会,产生了大量的农业盈余。金字塔、宏伟的丧葬神庙以及安葬着埃及国王和王后的岩石陵墓,既证明了神王的强大力量,也证明了该文化所创造的巨额盈余。1

As the Semites were absorbed into the Mesopotamian culture, another culture, similar to the Mesopotamian, was flourishing in Egypt. Like Mesopotamian society, Egyptian society was ruled by a king-god. Because of the geography of the area, Egypt was free of hostile invasions (the sea and the desert made it difficult for attackers to menace Egypt). This freedom from invasion combined with the warm, predictable climate and the fertile farmland of the Nile led to an extremely productive society that generated significant agricultural surpluses. The pyramids, great funerary temples, and rock-cut tombs in which the kings and queens of Egypt were laid to an uneasy rest are evidence both of the power of the king-gods and of the enormous surpluses generated by that culture.1

希腊文明的发展

Development of Greek Civilization

在整个南欧,与美索不达米亚相似的发展也在发生,尽管这种发展直到很晚才传入这些地区的大部分地区。在古希腊的克里特岛,象形文字早在公元前3000 年就已为人所知,但我们所说的文明进程直到后来才蓬勃发展——那里的鼎盛时期是从公元前 2000 年到公元前1200 年左右,当时克里特文明的物质形态突然被摧毁,可能是因为地震、海啸、火山爆发、这些灾难的某种组合,甚至是北方多立克部落的入侵。究竟发生了什么无法确定,因为无论是什么,摧毁了人类建筑,都是绝对的终结。

Throughout southern Europe, parallel developments to those in Mesopotamia were taking place, although they did not reach into most of those regions until much later. In Crete, part of ancient Greece, pictographic writing was known as early as 3000 BC, but what we have defined as the civilizing process did not flourish until later—its heyday there was from about 2000 bc to about 1200 BC, when physical Cretan civilization was suddenly destroyed, probably by an earthquake, tidal wave, volcanic eruption, some combination of these disasters, or even an invasion by the Doric tribes of the north. What exactly happened cannot be determined, simply because of the sheer finality of whatever it was that destroyed human constructs.

大约公元前700年至公元前500年,一个新的希腊文明兴起,西方文明和制度的许多根源都源于此。例如,西方的政治组织根植于希腊城邦(polis),即政治共同体。希腊城邦最初是指农业村落。这些村庄或城市也是独立的政治单位。其中最著名的两个是斯巴达和雅典(如今斯巴达是一个约有16,000名居民的城镇,而雅典则拥有近500万人口,是现代希腊的首都)。城邦的公民被视为彼此的亲属,理论上是来自共同祖先的后裔。希腊哲学家亚里士多德认为,城邦是人类天性的自然产物。他认为,没有法律和正义,人类是最坏的动物;而有了法律和正义,人类就是最好的动物。

from about 700 BC to 500 BC, a new Greek civilization emerged, and many ot the roots of Western civilization and institutions are to be found here. For example, Western political organizations have their foundations in the Greek polis, or political community. The Greek polis was originally an agricultural village. These villages or cities were also independent political units. The two most famous are Sparta and Athens (today Sparta is a town of about 16,000 inhabitants, whereas Athens bustles with close to five million people and is the capital of modern Greece). The citizens of such a unit were seen as relatives of each other, theoretically descended from a common ancestor. The Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that the polis was a natural outgrowth of the human being’s nature. He felt that without law and justice the human being was the worst of animals, but with law and justice, the best.

城邦的概念及其日益精妙复杂的实施,促进了城邦的发展,也促进了城市之间以及与其他文明之间联系的增多。随着贸易、工业和殖民的发展,一个新的阶层——商人——变得富有且举足轻重。这种变化给城邦带来了麻烦:统治贵族内部分裂,暴政(或称暴君统治)的出现。暴君是指以不受约束但并非必然邪恶的方式获得权力的君主或领导人,通过一人统治进行统治。这只是历史上众多经济变革和财富分配变化的例子之一,这些变化导致了政治和人与人之间社会关系的变化。尽管“暴君”的概念与城邦是对立的,暴君统治的习俗也只持续了大约一百年,但暴君在减少城邦内战、促进技术、艺术和文学发展所必需的经济和社会变革、削弱贵族的控制等方面发挥了重要作用。并且,矛盾的是,这让更多的人有机会在政府中任职。

The concept of the polis and its increasingly skillful and sophisticated implementation resulted in the growth of such cities and in the growth of their contacts with each other and with other civilizations. With the development of trade, industry, and colonization, a new class of people, the merchants, became wealthy and important. This change caused trouble for the polis: division within the ruling aristocracy and the establishment of tyranny, or rule by a tyrant, a monarch or leader who had gained power in an unregulated but not necessarily wicked way and who governed through one-man rule. This is one example among many in the history of economic changes and shifts in the distribution of wealth leading to changes in both politics and the social relations among people. Although the concept of “tyrant” was antithetical to the polis, and the custom of rule by tyrant lasted only about a hundred years, tyrants played a role in reducing civil wars among the poleis and in encouraging economic and social change necessary for the development of technology, the arts, and literature; reducing the grip of the aristocracy; and, paradoxically, giving more people the potential for roles in government.

波斯帝国

The Persian Empire

公元前五世纪,波斯帝国在美索不达米亚南部崛起。公元前四世纪,马其顿人征服了构成希腊世界的各个城邦。马其顿人没有城邦,由国王进行松散的统治。贵族议会制衡国王的权力。到公元前338年,其中一位国王,腓力二世,征服了雅典和其他希腊城邦。腓力二世于公元前336年遇刺身亡,其子亚历山大大帝继承王位,当时亚历山大还不满二十岁。亚历山大年仅三十三岁,因突发不明疾病去世。此时,他已巩固了父亲对希腊的征服,并继续征服埃及、几乎整个我们现在所说的中东地区以及印度的大部分地区。亚历山大曾提出“带我去征服更多世界”的口号。

In the fifth century BC, the Persian Empire arose in lower Mesopotamia, and in the fourth century bc the Macedonians conquered the various city-states that made up the world of Greece. The Macedonians had no polis and were ruled loosely by a king. A council of aristocracy served as a check on the king’s power, and by 338 bc one of these kings, King Philip II, had conquered Athens and other Greek city-states. Philip was assassinated in 336 bc, and his rule was assumed by his son, Alexander the Great, who was not yet twenty years old. By the time Alexander died, overcome by a sudden and unidentified disease when he was only thirty-three years old, he had solidified his fathers conquest of Greece and then gone on to conquer Egypt, almost all of what we now call the Middle East, and the greater part of India. To Alexander is attributed the demand “Bring me more worlds to conquer.”

波斯帝国中的希腊文明请注意,与前几节不同,我们将最后一节的标题定为“波斯帝国”,而不是“波斯文明的发展”。原因是波斯的遗产不是文化;它的遗产主要是帝国的建立。亚历山大的帝国并没有终结构成波斯帝国的文化和文明,尽管在军事上被征服,但希腊文化战胜了波斯文化。即使是波斯帝国也没有持续多久。公元前323 年亚历山大突然去世后,帝国迅速崩溃。对现代社会影响最深远的是希腊文化遗产,而不是波斯文化遗产。

Greek Civilization in the Persian Empire Notice that in contrast to the previous sections, we titled the last section “The Persian Empire,” not “The Development of the Persian Civilization.” The reason is that the Persian legacy was not cultural; its legacy was primarily the creation of an empire. Alexanders empire did not end the cultures and civilizations that made up the Persian Empire, and, although conquered militarily, Greek culture won out over the Persian culture. Even the Persian Empire did not last long. After Alexanders sudden death in 323 BC, the empire quickly collapsed. It is the Greek, not the Persian, cultural legacy that most strongly influenced modern society.

大约 1800 年后,许多希腊思想和制度在文艺复兴时期得以复兴。(文艺复兴可以翻译为“重生”,希腊思想

Many Greek ideas and institutions were revived almost 1,800 years later in what became known as the Renaissance. (Renaissance can be translated as “rebirth,” and Greek ideas were

波斯帝国(阴影部分)处于鼎盛时期

The Persian Empire (shown in the shaded area) at its height.

(一些重生的概念。)由于在文艺复兴时期占据主导地位,希腊社会的思想在随后的西方文明史上发挥了核心作用。

some of the concepts that were reborn.) Because of their predominance in the Renaissance, the ideas of Greek society played a central role in the subsequent history of Western civilization.

罗马文明

Roman Civilization

正如我们之前提到的,大约从公元前4000年开始,南欧和中欧的个体开始组织成社会群体。如果我们有数千页的篇幅来解释,而你又有数百年的时间去研究,我们就能详尽地叙述这些群体的历史和互动。然而,我们不得不有所取舍,下一个我们有足够的时间和空间去探讨的文明是罗马文明,它发展于如今的意大利。它的发展比其他许多文明都晚,直到公元前1000年,它仍然是一个由无组织部落组成的集合体。

As we mentioned earlier, individuals were organizing into social groups throughout southern and middle Europe in a period beginning about 4000 BC. If we had thousands of pages to explain and you had hundreds of years to study, we could recount the history and interaction of these groups. We are forced to be selective, however, and the next civilization that we have time and room for is the Roman civilization, which developed in what is now Italy. It developed later than many of the others, and as late as 1000 bc it remained a collection of unorganized tribes.

大约公元前1000年,意大利遭到好战邻国的入侵,这些邻国将他们的语言和社会组织强加于几乎整个意大利。公元前8世纪小村庄合并为罗马城邦,到公元前6世纪,罗马推翻了其统治。

About 1000 BC, Italy was invaded by its warlike neighbors, who imposed their language and social organization on almost all of Italy. In the eighth century BC, small villages were amalgamated into the city-state of Rome, and by the sixth century BC, it had overthrown its

古罗马广场遗址。 © Shutterstock

Ruins of the Roman Forum. © Shutterstock

外国征服者,并成为意大利和意大利文化的中心。罗马的统治构成了我们所说的罗马帝国,它持续了近一千年。

foreign conquerors and become the center of Italy and Italian culture. Rome’s dominance constituted what we call the Roman Empire, and it was to last almost a thousand years.

罗马国家是由选举产生国王的,尽管国王的职位似乎往往由同一家族继承。统治者拥有非凡的权力,可以逮捕甚至判处死刑,但所谓的元老院拥有否决权,统治者的权力最终源于元老院。

The Roman state was one in which the king was elected, although the office appears to have tended to remain in the same family. The ruler had extraordinary powers and could make arrests and even order capital punishment, but what was called the senate had veto power, and it was ultimately from the senate that the ruler derived his authority.

罗马人分为两类:贵族和平民。贵族拥有一切权力和特权;平民则不得担任任何公共或宗教职务。然而,平民在罗马持续不断的战争中作战的需要赋予了他们权力,到公元前450年,他们已经强大到足以推动罗马法律的大规模编纂。随着贵族与平民之间的区别逐渐瓦解,另一种基于财富、人脉和出身的阶级划分逐渐形成,罗马的大多数领导人都出身于这个新贵族阶层中的少数家族。

Individuals in Rome fell into two categories: patricians and plebeians. The patricians had all the power and privilege; the plebeians could hold no public or religious office. However, the need for the plebeians to fight in the constant wars that Rome undertook gave them power, and by 450 BC they were strong enough to enforce their demand for a major codification of Roman law. As the patrician-plebeian distinction broke down, another class distinction—based on wealth, contacts, and birth—developed, and most of the Roman leaders came only from the few families in this new aristocracy.

罗马文明一直延续到公元五世纪,但并未停滞不前。罗马共和国演变为罗马帝国,异教被基督教所取代;到了公元四世纪,基督教成为了罗马的国教。

Roman civilization endured until the fifth century ad, but it did not remain static. The Roman republic was transformed into the Roman Empire, and pagan religion gave way to Christianity; by the fourth century ad, Christianity was the state religion.

罗马人统治了数个世纪,其影响力至今仍遍布西方文明。他们征服了希腊文明,并将其融入自身文明。因此,当罗马文明影响我们时,希腊文明的影响也同样影响我们。以下是一些反映我们罗马文化遗产的事物。

The Romans exercised their power for centuries, and their influence pervades Western civilization today. They overran Greek civilization and incorporated it into their own, so that when Roman influence is transmitted to us, Greek influence is transmitted to us. Here are some of the things that reflect our Roman heritage.

  • 家庭的主导地位
  • The dominance of the family
  • 妇女掌管家务并拥有某些合法财产权的习俗
  • The custom of women to rule in household matters and to have certain legal property rights
  • 政治庇护
  • Political patronage
  • 社会和职业发展的“网络”联系体系
  • The “network” system of contacts for social and professional advancement
  • 解决技术问题的独创性
  • Ingenuity in solving technical problems
  • 依赖和实践各种工程和发明艺术
  • Reliance on and practice of all manner of engineering and inventive art
  • 帝国的概念
  • The concept of empire
  • 军工联合体的存在
  • Existence of a military-industrial complex
  • 第二套住房和度假村
  • Second homes and resorts
  • 大型农业控股公司
  • Large agricultural holdings
  • 城市生活的诱惑
  • The lure of city life
  • 灵活的法律体系,根据具体情况不断变化,依靠先例来解释和修改法规
  • A flexible legal system that is constantly changing to suit circumstances, relying on a body of precedents to interpret and modify statutes
  • 我们所有月份的名称和日历的组织
  • The names of all of our months and the organization of our calendar

罗马历史上最引人注目的四大现象——军事建设、工程建设、法律和政治管理——我们选择后者作为其他所有现象的基础。罗马的政治管理高效、合理、灵活、务实且人道。由于政府组织严密,罗马得以将其充裕的剩余精力投入到建筑、制造、农业、文学、贸易、道德哲学和征服世界。罗马也拥有充足的时间和拉丁语来发展、完善和表达其思想、原则、发现、推测和法令。如今,拉丁语构成了英语中数十万个词汇的基础,尽管英语本质上是一种日耳曼语。

From the four phenomena that are the most striking in Roman history—military undertakings, engineering, law, and political administration—we choose the last as being basic to all the rest. Roman political administration was efficient, reasonable, flexible, realistic, and humane. Because the government was so well organized, Rome was able to devote its ample excess energies to building, manufacture, agriculture, literature, trade, moral philosophy, and world conquest. Rome also had the leisure and Latin language to develop, refine, and express its thoughts, principles, discoveries, speculations, and decrees. Today, Latin forms the basis of hundreds of thousands of words in the English language, although essentially English is a Germanic language.

然而,罗马的成功也有其消极的一面:在带来好处的同时,也带来了自满、野心、贪婪、傲慢和暴政。由于这些特征比其秩序井然的社会的稳步发展更具戏剧性,今天我们常常从宗教冲突、野蛮战斗、奢华的公共狂欢节、贪污、对反对派的残酷镇压以及帝国的解体等方面来看待古罗马这些最终削弱了其对广大领土的控制,并导致了民众起义、金融崩溃和军事失败——简而言之,罗马帝国的覆灭,其领土包括大不列颠、欧洲大部分地区、北非和中东,均由罗马人管理。

Rome’s success, however, also had its negative side: Along with the benefits came complacency, ambition, greed, arrogance, and tyranny Because these traits are more dramatic than the steady march of its well-ordered society, today we often think of ancient Rome in terms of the religious conflict, savage combat, extravagant public carnivals, graft, brutal suppression of opposition, and dissolution that eventually weakened control over its enormous territory2 and caused popular uprisings, financial collapse, and military defeat—in short, the fall of the Roman Empire, the territory encompassing Great Britain, most of Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East administered by the Romans.

罗马遭到南北双方其他势力的攻击,到公元500年左右,帝国人口从估计的150万锐减至约30万,罗马文明最终走向灭亡。它为何灭亡?很难说,甚至可能根本不是问题本身。爱德华·吉本在《罗马帝国衰亡史》中指出,或许问题不应该是罗马为何衰亡?而应该问的是它为何能延续如此之久?

Rome was attacked by other groups from both the north and the south, and by about AD 500 the population of the empire had declined from an estimated 1.5 million to about 300,000, and Rome, as a civilization, ended. Why did it end? It is hard to say, and maybe that is not even the right question. Edward Gibbon argues in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire that perhaps the question should not be Why did Rome fall?, but Why did it last so long?

中世纪公元476-1453年)

The Middle Ages (ad 476-1453)

随着罗马帝国的衰落,我们现在称之为中世纪的时期到来了,大约从公元 476 年到公元 1453 年,是罗马文明和现代文明之间的时期。

With the fall of Rome came the advent of a period we now call the Middle Ages, from about AD 476 to AD 1453, between Roman civilization and modern civilization.

中世纪始于公元476年,当时罗马帝国被游牧部落击败,这些部落游荡在如今北欧和中欧的大部分地区。3尽管北方部落征服了罗马,但罗马文化至少部分地征服了北方部落的文化。这些部落开始吸收罗马帝国发展起来的一些技术、社会、宗教和政治结构。

The Middle Ages began in AD 476 with the defeat of the Roman Empire by wandering tribes that roamed over much of what is now northern and central Europe.3 Even though the northern tribes had conquered Rome, Roman culture at least partially conquered the northern tribal culture. The tribes began to adopt some of the technological, social, religious, and political structures that the Roman Empire had developed.

随着罗马文化向北传播,穆斯林文化也传遍了北非,并蔓延至整个西班牙和葡萄牙。由被称为摩尔人的战士组成的穆斯林军队进攻欧洲,侵入西班牙,随后又进入法国。公元732年,他们在与法兰克人的一场大战中败北,但他们在西班牙和葡萄牙的影响力依然强劲。

As Roman culture spread north, Muslim culture spread across North Africa and into all of Spain and Portugal. Muslim armies, formed of warriors known as Moors, attacked Europe, spread into Spain, and then moved into France. In AD 732, they lost a major battle against the Franks, but their influence remained strong in Spain and Portugal.

由于穆斯林控制了地中海,欧洲与东方的联系受到限制,欧洲被迫陷入某种程度的孤立。沿海城市变得不再繁荣,工人们从航海职业转向农业。流浪减少了,农业活动增加了,生活开始以庄园或封建领地为中心——一个由领主统治的区域。封建领地上的土地由农奴耕种,农奴是被束缚在特定庄园并服从封建领主意志的农民。基督教曾在罗马帝国蓬勃发展,其影响力得以保留并增强,部分原因是它的行政结构模仿了高效的罗马公民组织。

Because Muslims controlled the Mediterranean Sea and Europe’s contacts with the Orient were curtailed, Europe was forced into a kind of isolation. The coastal cities became less prosperous, and workers were displaced from seagoing occupations to agriculture. Wandering decreased, agricultural activity increased, and life became centered on a manor, or feudal estate—an area ruled by a lord. The land on the feud al estate was worked by serfs, peasants who were bound to a particular manor and subject to their feudal lord’s will. Christianity, which had been flourishing in the Roman Empire, retained and strengthened its influence partly because it had modeled its administrative structure on the efficient civil Roman organization.

教会通过主张独立于文官统治者,并抵御穆斯林进一步侵占欧洲的企图,巩固了其政治和军事权力。教会也有时间和精力在宗教教义问题上与内部激烈争吵。与此同时,大庄园的拥有者们彼此之间以及与各国王和民政官员之间争吵、和解,并重新调整他们的效忠对象。地方领主、国王和教会不断争夺权力、财富和土地,他们都在努力控制这些可用的资源,并相互攫取。

The church consolidated its political and military power by asserting its independence from civilian rulers and by fending off attempts by the Muslims to encroach further on Europe. It also had the time and energy to fight bitter quarrels within its own ranks on matters of religious doctrine. Meanwhile the holders of large manors quarreled, reconciled, and rearranged their allegiances among themselves and the various kings and civil administrators. The local lords, the kings, and the church constantly jockeyed for power, wealth, and land as they all struggled to control these available resources and seize them from one another.

中世纪早期的庄园生活相对简单:你出生;在父母居住的地方过着与他们相似的生活;然后去世,留下你的子孙后代继续这一过程。庄园的领地归封建领主所有,尽管当时的所有权定义与我们今天不同。土地在当时并不被认为是可以买卖的东西,而是因为属于领主,所以才被认为是属于领主的东西。农民,或者说农奴,在农场里劳作,作为回报,他们得到领主的保护和足够的食物。领主会提供一定的安全保障,防止他们受到攻击。

Manor life in the early Middle Ages was relatively straightforward: You were born; you lived a life similar to that of your parents in the same place that they lived; and you died, leaving your children to continue the process. The manor estate was owned by the feudal lord, although ownership was not defined in the way we define it today Land was not thought of as something that could be bought and sold, but rather as something that belonged to the lord because it belonged to the lord. The peasants, or serfs, did the work on the farm and in return received protection from the lord and enough food to live. The lord provided some security from attack.

简单的事情往往会变得复杂。随着领主们逐渐习惯于管理土地,他们开始觉得自己是真正的主人,也像主人一样行事。到十世纪末,土地所有权的概念逐渐被接受。随之而来的是,他们专注于获取越来越多的土地,而对维护旧有封建生活方式的关注逐渐消退。

What is simple has a tendency to become complex. As the lords became accustomed to managing the land, they began to feel like real owners and to act like owners. Toward the end of the tenth century, the concept of land ownership gained acceptance. This was logically followed by preoccupation with acquiring more and more land while concern for preserving the old feudal way of life faded.

十世纪末,在如今的法国和德国,一系列强势统治者成功地在欧洲部分地区建立了中央集权政府。行政体系应运而生,代表着不同阶层——领主、教会、农民和城镇居民——的利益。封建庄园的衰落意味着许多依附于这些庄园的工人重返城镇寻找其他工作。由于耕作和轮作技术进步,生产所需粮食所需的农业工人数量减少。随着城镇的发展,其经济也随之增长。城镇内部的人们进行买卖,城镇之间进行贸易,各地区为了保护贸易而维护和平,欧洲也变得强大,甚至能够扩张到地中海。

At the end of the tenth century, a series of strong rulers in what is now the countries of France and Germany succeeded in imposing centralized government on parts of Europe. Administrative systems developed in which the interests of the various classes—the lords, the church, the peasants, and the townspeople—were represented. The decline of the feudal manor meant that many of the workers who had been attached to those manors went back in to the towns looking for other kinds of jobs. Because of technological improvements having to do with methods of plowing and rotating crops, it took fewer agricultural workers to provide needed food. As the towns grew, their economies grew, too. People bought and sold within the town, towns traded with each other, regions had an interest in keeping the peace in order to protect trade, and Europe became strong enough even to venture into the Mediterranean Sea.

宗教和商业这两个因素相互作用,最终结束了欧洲的孤立状态。在中世纪,宗教在所有人的生活中都扮演着核心角色。事实上,天主教会是庄园外人士的主要机构。它掌控着教育和知识,并告诉人们应该如何生活。此外,教会拥有大量土地,并拥有强大的经济和政治权力。十字军东征展现了这种权力。十字军东征是11世纪至13世纪之间一系列宗教战争的集合,教会声称,这些战争是为了从异教徒手中收复耶路撒冷(位于今以色列)而必须进行的。

Two motives interacted to begin the end of Europe’s isolation: religion and commerce. In the Middle Ages, religion played a central role in all individuals’ lives. In fact, the Catholic Church was the primary institution for people outside of the manor. It controlled education and knowledge, and it told people how they should live their lives. Moreover, the church owned enormous amounts of land and had significant economic and political power. That power was demonstrated by the Crusades, a series of religious wars between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries that, the church said, were necessary to recover Jerusalem (in modern-day Israel) from the infidels.

十字军与阿拉伯文化的接触,为欧洲带来了新产品,让欧洲人学习了阿拉伯人所掌握的科学和数学知识,并重新激发了人们对希腊文化的兴趣。十字军东征刺激了贸易,使威尼斯、比萨和热那亚的商人致富。这个新兴的商人阶层改变了中世纪社会的内部结构,因为大多数商人以前都是没有土地的冒险家。他们的成长以及贸易繁荣的城市的发展,改变了社会制度的性质。

The contacts the Crusaders made with Arab culture introduced new products to Europe, taught the Europeans what Arabs had learned about science and mathematics, and revived interest in Greek culture. The Crusades stimulated trade and made the merchants of Venice, Pisa, and Genoa rich. This new merchant class changed the internal structure of the society of the Middle Ages because most merchants had been formerly landless adventurers. Its growth and the growth of the cities in which trade prospered changed the nature of the social system.

庄园生活结构清晰,个人角色明确,而城市中的角色则较为模糊,个人可以自由选择自己的职业。虽然以现代标准来看,城市仅仅是小镇,但它们提供了致富的机会,以及我们通常认为与城市相关的娱乐和知识多样性。城市的自由吸引了众多农奴和农民,尤其是那些被新农业技术从庄园土地上赶走的农奴和农民。当这种情况发生时,地主贵族失去了权力,在他们虚弱的状态下,被站在国王一边的商人所利用。先前存在的松散联盟被固化为现代民族国家,这些国家拥有明确的边界,人口使用相同的语言,利益也大致相同,由致力于促进特定民族国家经济、政治、社会和文化发展的统治者进行管理。

Whereas life on the manor was structured and individuals roles were well defined, in the cities there was ambiguity about roles, and individuals had the freedom to choose what they could be. Although by modern standards the cities were merely small towns, they offered the opportunity for wealth and the amusements and intellectual variety that we associate with cities. The freedom of the cities had attracted many serfs and peasants, especially those whom new agricultural technology had dispossessed from manor lands. When this occurred, the landed nobility lost power and in their weakened state were taken advantage of by the merchants, who sided with the kings. The loose associations that had previously existed were solidified into modern nation-states, separate countries with defined borders and populations with the same language and more or less the same interests, administered by rulers who sought to foster the particular nation-state’s economic, political, social, and cultural growth.

随着欧洲日益富裕,民族国家和教会之间的争斗也愈发激烈。所有国家都富有,也渴望更加富有;所有国家都强大,也渴望更加强大。最惨烈的战争发生在英法之间,被称为百年战争。这场战争从1337年持续到1453年,持续了一百多年,但也经历过和平时期,或者至少是双方都休养生息的疲惫时期。战争的焦点是什么?在于法国人是否

As Europe grew richer, the nation-states and the church had more to fight about. All were rich and wished to be richer, were powerful and wished to be more powerful. The worst fight was between the English and the French and was called the Hundred Years’ War. It raged from 1337 until 1453, more than a hundred years, but there were periods of peace, or at least periods of exhaustion when both sides rested. What was it about? It was about whether the French

应该统治英国,还是应该统治法国?这关乎威望,关乎谁更聪明、更强大,关乎边界和民族认同。这关乎所有战争的意义。

should rule in England or the English should rule in France. It was about prestige, about who was smarter and stronger, about boundaries and national identity. It was about what all wars are about.

比百年战争更严重的是黑死病,又称鼠疫,一种由老鼠传播的疾病。13世纪90年代,鼠疫抵达西西里岛,由中东贸易船只上的受感染老鼠传播。鼠疫通过商业路线从一个国家传播到另一个国家,袭击了整个欧洲,最远到达挪威,并于1350年左右在挪威消亡。当时可能已经没有受害者了。关于死亡人数的估计有很多,但普遍接受的数字是欧洲的40%。人口水平在200年内都未能恢复。

Worse even than the Hundred Years’ War was the Black Death, or bubonic plague, a disease transmitted by rats. In the 1290s, bubonic plague arrived in Sicily, carried there by infected rats from ships in the Middle Eastern trade. The plague was carried from country to country by commercial routes, attacking all of Europe as far as Norway, where it died out about 1350. It had probably just run out of victims. There are all kinds of estimates of how many people died, but a generally accepted figure is 40 percent of Europe. Population levels did not recover for 200 years.

这种人口变化带来了巨大的社会和经济后果。例如,瘟疫夺去了如此多的生命,以至于幸存的工人能够获得更高的工资。城市变得更加富裕。甚至天主教会也从中受益,因为它获得了大量的遗产和宗教费用。另一方面,地主们却遭受了损失,因为他们的工人相继去世,食物需求下降(食用食物的人更少),他们不得不为购买的东西支付更高的价格。

This population change had enormous social and economic consequences. For example, so many people were killed by the plague that the surviving workers were able to command much higher wages. Cities grew wealthier. Even the Catholic Church profited because it received so many inheritances and religious fees. Landholders, on the other hand, suffered because their workers died off, the demand for food dropped (fewer people to eat it), and they had to pay higher prices for the things they bought.

这段时期,教会内部斗争不断。其中一个问题是:政策应该由教皇制定,还是由各个教会制定?这些争吵削弱了教皇的权力,君主填补了权力真空。宗教生活开始受到世俗权力的控制。尽管教皇在罗马仍然占据着重要地位,但其权力基础萎缩,并失去了对欧洲其他地区不容置疑的权威。宗教辩论催生了新的世界观,欧洲的知识分子也已准备好接受新的思想。

Struggles within the church went on all during this period. One of the questions was: Shall policy be set by the pope or by the individual churches? The papacy was weakened by these quarrels, and monarchs moved into the power vacuum. Religious life became subject to civil control. Although the papacy still had a stronghold in Rome, its power base shrank and it lost much of its unquestioned authority over the rest of Europe. Religious debates had fostered new ways of looking at the world, and intellectual Europe was ready for new ideas.

新的思想即将到来。1453年,基督教统治下的君士坦丁堡被穆斯林土耳其人攻陷。逃往欧洲的难民中,不乏希腊学者,他们带来了推动文艺复兴的学识和传统。

New ideas were about to arrive. In 1453, Constantinople, which was under Christian control, fell to the Turks, who were Muslims, Among the refugees who escaped to Europe were Greek scholars, who brought with them learning and traditions that fueled the Renaissance.

文艺复兴

The Renaissance

中世纪在十五世纪左右结束,当时的学者们决定开启一个“新开端”。他们把这个新开端称为文艺复兴。文艺复兴意为“重生”,它发生在中世纪之后。当时,古希腊和古罗马的知识得以重建,理性、批判性思维和艺术蓬勃发展。建筑、雕塑、绘画,甚至工程和批判性研究

The Middle Ages ended sometime in the fifteenth century, when scholars of the time decided that they were embarking on a “new beginning.” They called the new beginning the Renaissance. Renaissance means “rebirth,” and it occurred after the Middle Ages, when the knowledge of the ancient Greeks and Romans was reestablished and reason, critical thinking, and the arts flourished. Architecture, sculpture, painting, and even engineering and critical investigation

是由列奥纳多·达·芬奇、拉斐尔、米开朗基罗和多纳泰罗等艺术家创作的。文艺复兴鼓励批判性思维,人们不再必须接受教会长老对所有问题的指令。

were created by artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Donatello. The Renaissance encouraged critical thinking, and people no longer necessarily accepted the dictates of the church elders on all topics under the sun.

1517年,这种批判性思维引发了一系列事件,后来被称为新教改革。当时,一位名叫马丁·路德的德国奥古斯丁修士在维滕贝格城堡教堂的大门上张贴了九十五条反对赎罪券的论纲。赎罪券可以减少甚至取消罪人在炼狱中受罚的时间。天主教会将赎罪券授予罪人,作为对某些行为的回报,例如诵读某些祷文或参拜某些圣地。在路德时代,由于教会出售赎罪券牟利,赎罪券的做法已被腐化。路德对这种做法感到愤慨。他认为,人类得救不能靠赎罪券,而只能靠信仰。路德张贴这些论纲是对教皇绝对权威的直接挑战。面对这一挑战,路德和其他新教神学家开始强制收缩教会权力,并在各个群体之间制造了复杂的敌对情绪,这种情绪至今仍可见,例如北爱尔兰的新教徒和天主教徒之间的对抗。

In 1517, such critical thinking put in motion a set of events that came to be known as the Protestant Reformation, when a German Augustinian friar by the name of Martin Luther posted ninety-five theses against indulgences on the door of the castle church of Wittenberg. Indulgences are reductions in, or even elimination of, the time a sinner would otherwise have to spend being punished in purgatory. They are granted by the Catholic Church to sinners in return for actions such as saying certain prayers or visiting certain holy shrines. In Luther’s day, the practice had been corrupted because the church sold indulgences for profit. Luther was outraged by this practice. He believed that human beings must be saved not by indulgences but by faith alone. Luther’s posting of the theses was a direct challenge to the pope’s absolute authority. With this challenge, Luther and other Protestant theologians began a forced retrenchment of church power and created a complex of hostilities between groups that can still be seen today, for example, in the antagonisms between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland.

自由思想和理性对于塑造我们世界的事件的重要性,可以从一句流行的说法中看出:哲学家伊拉斯谟(1466-1536)是理性的坚定倡导者之一,他“生下了路德孵出的蛋”。然而,在整个文艺复兴时期,宗教的影响力依然强劲。新教改革只挑战了文艺复兴中那些崇尚传统宗教的方面。宗教改革用一种赋予个人更大权利的宗教取而代之。其他文艺复兴的价值观,例如教育、宗教和对上帝的服从,都得到了保留。

The importance of free thinking and rationality to the events that shaped our world can be seen in the popular saying to the effect that the philosopher Erasmus (1466-1536), who was one of the strongest advocates of rationality, “laid the egg that Luther hatched.” Nevertheless, throughout the Renaissance, the influence of religion remained strong. The Protestant Reformation challenged only those aspects of the Renaissance that paid obeisance to traditional religion. The Reformation replaced it with a religion that gave a stronger role to the individual. Other Renaissance values, such as the importance of education, religion, and obedience to God, were maintained.

正如我们之前所讨论的,直到中世纪后期,各个封建领主都拥有强大的权力。尽管他们与国王或君主结成松散的联盟,但各个领主的权力往往大于君主。贸易的扩张、城市的发展以及新商人阶层的诞生,促成了一系列新的联盟,为现代国家的发展提供了可能。文艺复兴巩固了这一发展。国家在整个18世纪持续发展,到18世纪末,我们现在所熟悉的大多数欧洲国家都已建立君主制。

As we discussed earlier, until the latter part of the Middle Ages the individual feudal lords had strong powers, and although they were tied together into loose confederations with a king or monarch, often the individual lords had more power than the monarch. The expansion of trade, the development of cities, and the creation of a new merchant class led to a new set of alliances that made possible the development of the modern state. The Renaissance solidified that development. The states continued to develop throughout the 1700s, and by the end of that century, most of the states of Europe that we are now familiar with had been formed as monarchies.

马丁·路德废除教皇的法案。© SuperStock/Alamy Stock Photo

Martin Luther discarding the Pope’s Bill. © SuperStock/Alamy Stock Photo

这一时期,由商人和富裕农民组成的中产阶级不断壮大,但传统生活的重心依然存在。变革被视为坏事,传统依然是重要的焦点,左右着社会的发展方向。

Throughout this period, the middleclass, consisting of merchants and wealthier peasants, continued to grow, but the focus on traditional life remained. Change was considered bad, and tradition remained the important focal point, governing the direction of society.

现代经济和政治制度的发展

The Development of Modern Economic and Political Institutions

在中世纪和封建制度下,市场虽然存在,但并非个人获取生存所需物品的主要途径。然而,市场和贸易确实提供了奢侈品和各种各样的商品,并且在整个中世纪,一系列集市应运而生,人们在这些集市上交换这些商品。商人从这些集市的贸易中获得越来越多的收入,并逐渐变得强大到足以与国王联手削弱领主的权利。这些变化与文艺复兴同时发生。

During the Middle Ages and under the feudal system, markets existed, but they were not the chief ways by which individuals acquired the goods they needed for existence. Markets and trade did, however, provide luxuries and a variety of goods, and throughout the Middle Ages a set of fairs developed during which individuals bartered these goods. Merchants acquired more and more income from the trade at these fairs and gradually became strong enough to join with the king in reducing the rights of the lords. These changes occurred simultaneously with the Renaissance.

中世纪时期,人们对经济的看法与今天截然不同。经济活动本身并非好事;引导人们行动的是传统,而非利润动机。每个人都清楚自己的位置,角色也清晰明确。当时也有一些自由人,例如商人,他们四处奔波,由此衍生出各种各样的城市或市场,庄园主可以在那里与商人进行交易。但如果不是十字军东征加速并显著加剧了庄园制度的瓦解,所有这些事件都不会带来太大的变化。

In the Middle Ages, people looked at the economy quite differently than we do today. Economic activity was not necessarily good in itself; tradition, rather than the profit motive, guided peoples actions. Everyone knew their place, and roles were well defined. There were a few free individuals, such as the merchants, and as a by-product of their traveling from place to place, a variety of cities or marketplaces sprang up where individuals from the manors could go to trade with the merchants. But all of these events would not have brought much change were it not for the Crusades, which sped up and significantly increased the breakdown of the manorial system.

从农奴制到重商主义

From Serfdom to Mercantilism

在此期间,农奴制(封建制度下,封建领主根据其农业产出或劳动天数的一定比例向其缴纳义务)逐渐转变为租金支付制。中央经济从

During this time, there was a gradual transition from the system of serfdom, feudal obligations owed by vassals to their lords based on a percentage of their agricultural output or days of labor, into payments of money due for rent owed. The central economy shifted from a system of

传统义务,基于以产品和服务交换金钱为基础的制度。领主们支持这一运动,因为不断扩张的贸易需要他们拥有金钱来与商人打交道。贸易带来的欲望膨胀使许多领主陷入贫困,而商人的收入则远远超过最富有的领主。

traditional obligations to a system based on the exchange of products and services for money. The lords were in favor of this movement because the expanding trade required them to have money in order to deal with the merchants. The expanded wants generated by this trade left many lords impoverished, and the merchants had incomes significantly exceeding those of the richest lords.

此时,土地贵族不再仅仅将祖传的庄园视为自己的财产,而是将其视为可能的现金来源。当养羊变得有利可图时,他们开始圈占原本共有的土地,以便羊群可以在上面吃草。这使得佃户的生计越来越困难。圈地运动剥夺了许多佃户的土地,并催生了一批新的劳动力——那些没有土地的人,他们迁入城市,过着边缘化的生活,或者四处漂泊。

At that point, the landed aristocracy began to view their ancestral manors not just as something that belonged to them but as possible sources of cash, and when sheep became profitable, they began to enclose the land that had been previously held in common, so that the sheep could graze on it. This made it more and more difficult for the tenants to support themselves. Enclosure dispossessed many tenants and created a new type of labor force—individuals without land who moved into the cities and led a marginal existence or wandered from place to place.

尽管法国直到1789年、德国直到19世纪50年代才正式废除农奴制,但到了18世纪,市场经济已然兴起,但却尚未获得完全的法律和政治地位。新的经济秩序就是重商主义,这是资本主义的早期阶段,私有制和利润很重要,但国家控制力很强。在重商主义体系中,国王赋予个人从事各种贸易的权利,国家错综复杂地介入商业和贸易的各个方面,各国都试图使出口商品多于进口商品,并建立自己的黄金储备。技术发展贯穿整个时期,但在18世纪,技术变革本身从根本上改变了劳动的方式和需求。

Although serfdom was not formally abolished in France until 1789 and in Germany until the 1850s, by the 1700s the market economy was definitely emerging, but it had yet to receive full legal and political status. The new economic order was mercantilism, an early phase of capitalism in which private ownership and profits were important, but in which there was significant state control. In a mercantilist system, the king granted rights for individuals to conduct a variety of trades, the state was intricately involved in all aspects of commerce and business, and countries all tried to export more goods than they imported and to build up their gold reserves. Technological developments continued throughout this time, but in the 1700s, technological changes themselves fundamentally altered the methods of, and needs for, labor.

民族国家的出现

The Emergence of Nation-States

随着各州的壮大和贸易的回暖,君主们试图通过支持商人前往非洲(寻找黄金)和印度(寻找香料)来巩固和扩大自己的权力。这些航行避开了黄金运往欧洲的阿拉伯陆路路线,也避开了胡椒、丁香和其他香料运往西欧和印度之间漫长而艰辛的陆路路线。因此,我们有了各种各样的大航海探险,例如哥伦布的航行,它们极大地拓宽了社会的可能性。正是通过这些寻找通往印度更好路线的航行,后来成为美国的地区才进入了西方发展的版图。

As the individual states grew and trade picked up, the monarchs attempted to consolidate and broaden their power by supporting the merchants in voyages to Africa (in search of gold) and India (in search of spices). Such voyages avoided the Arab land routes by which gold had been making its way to Europe and the long, arduous overland route between western Europe and India through which pepper, cloves, and other spices came. Thus we have a variety of voyages of discovery such as Columbus’s that tremendously broadened possibilities for society. It was through these voyages in search of still better routes to India that what became the United States enters the picture of Western development.

民族国家的出现引发了国家内部和国家之间的无数战争。这些战争包括法国宗教战争(1562-1598)、三十年战争(1618-1648)、英国光荣革命(1688)、瑞典与俄罗斯之间的北方大战争(1700-1721)、西班牙王位继承战争(1701-1714)等等。这类战争在历史上的大部分时间里都存在;冲突和冲突的威胁至今仍是现代世界面临的最重要问题。

The emergence of nation-states led to numerous wars both within and among nations. These included the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648), the Glorious Revolution in England (1688), the Great Northern War between Sweden and Russia (1700-1721), the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714), and many others. Such wars were present throughout much of history; and both conflict and the threat of conflict are still the most important problems facing the modern world.

约翰国王签署《大宪章》

© GL Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

King John signing the Magna Carta.

© GL Archive/Alamy Stock Photo

1750 年代至 1850 年代的工业和政治革命

The Industrial and Political Revolutions of the 1750s to the 1850s

1750 年至 1850 年这段时期通常被称为革命时代,因为那段时期发生了巨大的经济和政治变化。

The period of time from 1750 to 1850 is often called the Age of Revolutions because of the enormous economic and political changes that occurred during that time.

18世纪50年代,技术变革再次对社会各个领域产生了巨大的影响。这些技术变革至关重要,以至于下一个重要时期被称为工业革命。工业革命始于1750年至1900年左右,其特点是机器的发明,这些机器极大地提高了总产量,并重新组织了工作模式和社会关系。尽管工业革命始于英国,但其影响很快传遍了世界各地。这场革命受到技术发展的推动,例如约翰·凯伊的飞梭 1733年)、詹姆斯·哈格里夫斯的珍妮纺纱机(1765年)、詹姆斯·瓦特的蒸汽机(1769年)以及理查德·阿克赖特的动力织机(1769年)。这些发明使得产量远超以往,从而产生了重新组织个人工作类型的需要。

In the 1750s, once again technological changes had enormous influence on all parts of society. These technological changes were so important that the next significant period is called the Industrial Revolution, a period from 1750 to about 1900 characterized by the invention of machines that had the effect of greatly increasing total output and reorganizing work patterns and social relationships. Although the Industrial Revolution began in England, its influence soon spread throughout the world. The revolution was spurred by technological developments such as John Kay’s flying shuttle4 (1733), James Hargreaves’s spinning jenny (1765), James Watt’s steam engine (1769), and Richard Arkwright’s power loom (1769). These inventions made it possible to produce much more output than had hitherto been possible, and in doing so created the need to reorganize the types of work that individuals did.

为了生产这些机器并运用这些技术,城市需要工人到工厂工作。这样,离开乡村庄园的人们就有了另一种选择。由于工厂的工资最初通常比农场高,人们开始涌入城市,希望在那里找到工作。工业革命进一步加强了与君主制结盟的商人的权力。

In order to produce these machines and use the technology, individuals were needed in cities to work in factories. Thus people leaving the rural manors had an alternative. Because pay was often initially higher in factories than on the farm, a migration began into the cities, where people hoped to get jobs. The Industrial Revolution further strengthened the power of the merchants, who had allied themselves with the monarchy.

在政治方面,这一时期见证了美国革命和法国革命。1776年,美国革命爆发,削弱了大英帝国,确立了个人相对于国家和统治者的权利。美国革命爆发的压力与后来引发法国大革命的条件相同。由于18世纪大部分时间的战争,政府背负着巨额债务,并不得不持续支付高额利息。在法国大革命(1789年)前夕,法国债务的利息占法国总预算的一半以上。随着商人厌倦了偿还债务,中产阶级与一些成员结盟贵族阶级的解体,引发了社会组织方式的革命。国王的权力被废除,人权和公民权宣言应运而生。法国大革命体现了新兴社会科学的思想,改变了社会的政治和经济组织。

On the political front, this period witnessed both the American and French Revolutions. In 1776, the American Revolution began, weakening the British empire and establishing the rights of individuals relative to the state and ruler. The pressures that had erupted in the American Revolution were founded in the same conditions as those that later caused the French Revolution. Because of the wars that had marked much of the 1700s, governments had significant debts on which they continually had to pay high interest. On the eve of the French Revolution (1789), the interest paid on the French debt was more than half of France’s total budget. As the merchants grew tired of paying this debt, the middle class aligned itself with some members of the aristocracy, leading to a revolution in the way societies were organized. The power of the king was eliminated, and there was a declaration of the rights of man and citizenship. The French Revolution, embodying the ideas of the emerging social sciences, changed the political and economic organization of society.

工业革命早期工厂图纸,出自狄德罗百科全书。

© 布里奇曼艺术图书馆

Drawing of early Industrial Revolution factory, from Diderots Encyclopédie.

© The Bridgeman Art Library

工业革命在19世纪初生根发芽。中产阶级迅速壮大,凭借其新获得的政治权力,在经济运行中扮演着日益重要的角色。在此期间,国家和社会组织经历了改革,摆脱了传统,开展了意义重大的社会实验。在此期间,社会和国家之间的界限更加清晰。到1850年,在西欧,民族国家和议会制政府的概念占据了主导地位。

The Industrial Revolution took hold in the 1800s. The middle class grew enormously and, with its newfound political power, pursued an increasingly important role in running the economy. During this time, significant social experimentation took place as the state and the organization of society went through the process of reform and of throwing off tradition. Throughout this period, societies and individual countries became more clearly defined, and by 1850 in western Europe, the concept of a nation-state with parliamentary government ruled the day.

但这些民族国家必须学会共存,而它们未能做到这一点,也未能找到一种通过谈判解决争端的方法,导致了持续的战争,并极大地改变了民族国家之间的界限。战争的结果是,许多新的民族国家应运而生,而旧的民族国家则不时消亡。19世纪,土耳其政权被驱逐出欧洲大部分地区,新的国家在巴尔干半岛取而代之:希腊、保加利亚、塞尔维亚、罗马尼亚、阿尔巴尼亚和黑山。大约有20个新国家从西班牙和葡萄牙在新大陆的旧有领地中分离出来。大约在19世纪中叶,中国和日本向西方贸易敞开了大门。它们也分别于1842年和1854年加入了民族国家共同体。

But these nation-states had to learn to live together, and their failure to do so and to discover a way to negotiate settlements of disputes among them led to continued warfare and significantly changed the boundaries separating nation-states. As a result of wars, many new nation-states have sprung into being, whereas from time to time old ones have died out. During the nineteenth century, Turkish authority was expelled from most of Europe, and new states took its place on the Balkan Peninsula: Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Albania, and Montenegro. Approximately twenty new states were formed from the old holdings of Spain and Portugal in the New World. About the middle of the nineteenth century, China and Japan opened their doors to Western trade. They, too, entered the community of nation-states, in 1842 and 1854, respectively.

学习共同生活

Learning to Live Together

第一次世界大战是德国、奥匈帝国和土耳其与英国、法国、比利时、意大利、卢森堡、保加利亚、南斯拉夫部分地区、俄罗斯、日本和美国之间的战争。战争从1914年持续到1918年末。它摧毁了奥匈帝国和爱沙尼亚这两个旧的多民族国家,并重新划分了欧洲版图。第二次世界大战从1939年持续到1945年,是一场更具国际性的战争。战争一方是德国、日本和意大利,另一方是美国、加拿大、大英帝国、欧洲大部分地区、包括中国在内的亚洲大部分地区、许多西太平洋国家以及苏维埃社会主义共和国联盟(苏联)。战争直接导致了以色列的建立以及朝鲜半岛和德国的分裂。第二次世界大战后,非洲和亚洲殖民地出现了民族主义高涨,20世纪60年代,一批非洲和亚洲国家摆脱了英法帝国的统治。

World War I was a war between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey on one side and Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, Bulgaria, parts of Yugoslavia, Russia, Japan, and the United States on the other side. It lasted from 1914 to late in 1918. It tore down the old multinational states of Austria-Hungary and Estonia, and redrew other parts of the European map. Lasting from 1939 to 1945, World War II was a much more international war and was fought between Germany, Japan, and Italy on one side, and the United States, Canada, the British Empire, most of Europe, much of Asia including China, many of the Western Pacific countries, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on the other side. It led directly to the establishment of Israel, and the divisions of Korea and Germany. After World War II, a surge of nationalism took place in the colonial areas of Africa and Asia, and in the 1960s a number of African and Asian states emerged from the British and French empires.

从20世纪80年代末开始,又发生了一些剧烈的变化。苏联解体,苏联内部的政治分支,例如俄罗斯、格鲁吉亚、乌兹别克斯坦和乌克兰,都成为独立国家。东西柏林墙倒塌,东德和西德统一成为德国。其他东欧国家脱离俄罗斯,加入扩大后的欧盟,与西方紧密相连。20世纪后期,这些变化使美国成为世界唯一超级大国,但这一时期并不持久。随着欧洲经济的增长,欧盟日益发挥其独立实力,中国和印度则崛起成为未来的经济和潜在的政治超级大国。这些因素——加上伊斯兰国家的复兴,以及伊拉克、埃及和利比亚等阿拉伯国家政府的重大变化——表明21世纪初的世界很可能是一个艰难变革和权力共享的世界。

Beginning in the late 1980s, additional dramatic changes took place. The USSR broke up, and political subdivisions within the USSR, such as Russia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine, all became independent countries. The wall between East and West Berlin was torn down, and East and West Germany reunited to become one Germany. Other eastern European countries broke from Russia and became part of an expanded European Union, tying themselves with the West. In the late 1900s, these changes made the United States the worlds sole superpower, but that period was short-lived. As the European economies grew, the European Union increasingly exerted its independent power, and China and India emerged as future economic and likely political superpowers. These factors—combined with the reawakening of Islamic countries, and significant changes in government in Arab countries such as Iraq, Egypt, and Libya—indicate that the world in the early decades of the twenty-first century is likely to be one of difficult change and shared power.

结论

Conclusion

就是这样:这一章讲述了西方文明的历史——虽然不是最彻底或最完整的历史,但它能让你了解我们社会的起源以及我们在本书其余部分所考虑的制度。

That’s it: the history of Western civilization in a chapter—not the most thorough or complete history, but one that will give you some sense of the origins of our society and the institutions we consider throughout much of the rest of the book.

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 农业的发展和动物的驯化在建立固定社区方面发挥了关键作用,这对于现代文明至关重要。
  • The development of agriculture and the domestication of animals played key roles in the establishment of fixed communities, which were essential to modern civilization.
  • 埃及和美索不达米亚是现代文明的摇篮。
  • Egypt and Mesopotamia formed the cradle of modern civilization.
  • 对我们产生重大影响的希腊文明兴起于公元前 700 年至公元前 500 年左右。
  • The Greek civilization that significantly influenced our own emerged from about 700 BC to 500 BC.
  • 公元前五世纪,罗马文明兴起,并一直统治着世界,直到公元五世纪。
  • In the fifth century BC, Roman civilization emerged and remained dominant until the fifth century AD.
  • 在中世纪,教会主宰着人们的生活。
  • In the Middle Ages, the church dominated life.
  • 文艺复兴时期是艺术蓬勃发展的时期,人们被鼓励质疑一些教会的命令。
  • The Renaissance was a period when the arts flourished and people were encouraged to question some church dictates.
  • 革命时代(大约从 1750 年到 1850 年)导致了我们现代经济和政府体系的出现。
  • The Age of Revolutions, from about 1750 to 1850, led to the emergence of our modern economic and governmental systems.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 农业时代(44)
  • Age of Agriculture (44)
  • 革命时代 (57)
  • Age of Revolutions (57)
  • 黑死病 (53)
  • Black Death (53)
  • 汉谟拉比法典 (46)
  • Code of Hammurabi (46)
  • 十字军东征 (51)
  • Crusades (51)
  • 封建庄园 (50)
  • feudal estate (50)
  • 工业革命(96)
  • Industrial Revolution (96)
  • 大宪章 (268)
  • Magna Carta (268)
  • 重商主义 (56)
  • mercantilism (56)
  • 中世纪 (50)
  • Middle Ages (50)
  • 民族国家 (52)
  • nation-states (52)
  • 城邦 (46)
  • polis (46)
  • 文艺复兴 (53)
  • Renaissance (53)
  • 罗马帝国 (50)
  • Roman Empire (50)
  • 农奴制(55)
  • serfdom (55)
  • 农奴(50)
  • serfs (50)
  • 第一次世界大战(58)
  • World War I (58)
  • 第二次世界大战(58)
  • World War II (58)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 哪些发展使人类从流浪的狩猎者转变为居住在固定社区的居民?城镇的发展赋予了人们哪些责任和功能?
  2. What are some of the developments that changed human beings from roving hunters to people living in fixed communities? What responsibilities and functions did the towns grow to provide?
  3. 西方社会存在过哪些法律体系?您认为其中哪些条款在今天仍然适用?
  4. What are some of the legal systems that have existed in Western society? Do you think any of their provisions have relevance today?
  5. 哪些条件使得某些社会阶层变得富裕?您认为财富集中对社会性质来说是积极因素还是消极因素?
  6. What conditions enabled certain classes of society to grow wealthy? Do you think concentrations of wealth were a positive or a negative factor for the nature of society?
  7. 列举一些在西方社会发展过程中一直延续下来的人类特征。
  8. Name some human characteristics that have persisted over time in the development of Western society.
  9. 回顾您今天的生活,您能否发现一些可能源自希腊人的想法?源自罗马?源自中世纪?如果是,具体是哪几个时期?(如果你愿意,可以选择其他讨论过的时期,比如宗教改革和工业革命。)
  10. In thinking about your life today, can you identify any ideas that may have come from the Greeks? From the Romans? From the Middle Ages? If so, what are they? (If you prefer, choose some of the other periods discussed, such as the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution.)
  11. 中世纪时期,阿拉伯世界如何影响了西方社会的发展?您认为这与当今中东的局势有何相似之处?
  12. How did the Arab world influence the development of Western society in the Middle Ages? Do you see any parallels with the situation in the Middle East today?
  13. 农民从领主那里得到了什么?领主又得到了什么?你认为这是公平的交换吗?
  14. What did the peasant get from the feudal lord, and what did the feudal lord get in return? Do you think it was a fair exchange?
  15. 教堂如何影响中世纪的生活?它的影响力在文艺复兴时期有变化吗?
  16. How did the church affect life in the Middle Ages? Did its influence change in the Renaissance?
  17. 贸易和商业是如何发展的?如果你现在能买到的东西都是在你家十英里范围内种植或制造的,你觉得你的生活会是什么样子?
  18. How did trade and commerce develop? What do you think your life would be like today if the only things you could buy were those that were grown or manufactured within ten miles of your house?
  19. 工业革命彻底改变了什么?
  20. What was revolutionized by the Industrial Revolution?
  21. 列举一些改变西方社会进程的战争。你认为它们为什么会带来变革?
  22. Name some of the wars that altered the course of Western society. Why do you think they led to change?
  23. 列举一些在西方社会中成长起来的制度。它们如何改变当今社会?
  24. Identify some of the institutions that have grown up in Western society. How are they changing society today?
  25. 当今西方社会面临的最重要的问题是什么?您能想到什么解决方案?
  26. What is the most important problem facing Western society today? What solutions can you think of?
  27. 本章始终探讨穆斯林世界的影响。您认为这种影响在未来五十年将如何发展?
  28. Throughout the chapter, the influence of the Muslim world has been brought into the discussion. How do you think this influence will play out during the next fifty years?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 根据 Matthew Gabriele(www.Washingtonpost.com/opinions/5-myths-about-the-middleages/2016/09/22/e56c4150-7f50-lle6-90705c4905bf40dc_story.html?utm_term=.3a93ddba8f6b)的说法,中世纪的五大神话是什么?
  2. According to Matthew Gabriele (www.Washingtonpost.com/opinions/5-myths-about-the-middleages/2016/09/22/e56c4150-7f50-lle6-90705c4905bf40dc_story.html?utm_term=.3a93ddba8f6b) what are five myths of the Middle Ages?
  3. 请访问http://industrialrevolution.sea.ca/impact.html,了解工业革命的相关内容。工业革命期间,社会结构发生了哪些变化?
  4. Go to http://industrialrevolution.sea.ca/impact.html and read about the Industrial Revolution. How did the social structure change during the Industrial Revolution?
  5. 请访问www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/plague.htm阅读有关黑死病的文章。黑死病的症状是什么?当时人们是如何预防这种疾病的?
  6. Read about the Black Death at www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/plague.htm. What were the symptoms? How did people try to avoid the disease?
  7. 请访问www.thenagain.info/WebChron/WestEurope/AgeRevs.html。革命时代(1763-1848)的五个主要群体是什么?请选择一个群体,并列出其中的重要事件。
  8. Goto www.thenagain.info/WebChron/WestEurope/AgeRevs.html. What are the five major groupings in the Age of Revolutions (1763-1848)? Pick one and list the important events.
  9. 请访问https://classicalwisdom.com/politics/empires/the-rise-the-fall-and-the-mystery-of-the-mycenaeans/。了解迈锡尼人的古希腊文明。这个文明是如何衰落的?
  10. Go to https://classicalwisdom.com/politics/empires/the-rise-the-fall-and-the-mystery-of-the-mycenaeans/. Read about the ancient Greek civilization of the Myceneans. How did this civilization fall?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • Acemoglu,Daron 和 James Robinson,《国家为何失败:权力、繁荣和贫困的起源》纽约:Crowne Business,2012 年。
  • Acemoglu, Daron, and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, New York: Crowne Business, 2012.
  • 布伦德尔,苏,《希腊和罗马思想中的文明起源》,纽约:劳特利奇,2015 年。
  • Blundell, Sue, The Origins of Civilization in Greek and Roman Thought, New York: Routledge, 2015.
  • 鲍登,乔纳森·艾特,《西方文明的反击》,加利福尼亚州旧金山:Counter-Currents Publishing,2014 年。
  • Bowden, Jonathan Et, Western Civilization Bites Back, San Francisco, CA: Counter-Currents Publishing, 2014.
  • 戴利,乔纳森,《历史学家争论西方的崛起》,纽约:劳特利奇,2014 年。
  • Daly, Jonathan, Historians Debate the Rise of the West, New York: Routledge, 2014.
  • Diamond,Jared,《崩溃:社会如何选择失败或成功》,纽约:Viking,2005 年。
  • Diamond, Jared, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, New York: Viking, 2005.
  • Diamond,Jared,《枪炮、病菌与钢铁:人类社会的命运》,纽约:诺顿,1997 年。
  • Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, New York: Norton, 1997.
  • 多林金德斯利出版公司员工,《大历史》,纽约:企鹅兰登书屋,2013 年。
  • Dorling Kindersley Publishing Staff, Big History, New York: Penguin Random House, 2013.
  • 哈里斯,李,《文明及其敌人:历史的下一阶段》,纽约:自由出版社,2004 年。
  • Harris, Lee, Civilization and Its Enemies: The Next Stage of History, New York: Free Press, 2004.
  • Heilbroner,R.,《世俗哲学家》,修订版,纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,1980 年。
  • Heilbroner, R., The Worldly Philosophers, rev. ed., New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980.
  • 凯利,约翰,《大死亡:黑死病的私密历史——史上最具破坏性的瘟疫》,纽约:哈珀柯林斯出版社,2005 年。
  • Kelly, John, The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time, New York: Harper Collins, 2005.
  • 拉纳,约翰,《马可波罗与世界的发现》,康涅狄格州纽黑文:耶鲁大学出版社,1999 年。
  • Larner, John, Marco Polo and the Discovery of the World, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999.
  • 刘易斯,彼得,《中世纪》,慕尼黑:Verlag CH Beck o HG,2015 年。
  • Lewis, Peter, The Middle Ages, Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck o HG, 2015.
  • 马戈利斯,霍华德,《一切始于哥白尼:彻底颠覆世界如何引发科学革命》纽约:麦格劳希尔,2002 年。
  • Margolis, Howard, It Started with Copernicus: How Turning the World Inside Out Led to the Scientific Revolution, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2002.
  • 莫里斯,伊恩,《西方为何统治当今:历史模式及其对未来的启示》,纽约:法勒、斯特劳斯和吉鲁出版社,2011 年。
  • Morris, Ian, Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第二部分 文化与个人

Part II Culture and the Individual

第四社会、文化和文化变迁

chapter 4Society, Culture, and Cultural Change

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-4

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-4

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 解释为什么文化对于社会凝聚力至关重要
  • Explain why culture is necessary to hold society together
  • 列出一些重要的文化元素
  • List some important elements of culture
  • 简要总结三种流行的文化变迁理论
  • Summarize briefly three popular theories of cultural change
  • 列出导致文化变革的五个因素
  • List five factors that cause culture to change
  • 列举三个稳定文化的因素
  • List three factors stabilizing culture
  • 探讨文化滞后理论及其局限性
  • Discuss the cultural lag theory and its limitations
  • 解释文化相对主义学说
  • Explain the doctrine of cultural relativism

人类是社会性动物。我们无法脱离社会环境来理解自身的本质。正因如此,我们将这门学科称为社会科学

Human beings are social beings. We cannot understand our nature independently of our social environment. That is why we call our discipline social science.

要理解人类作为社会存在的角色,我们必须理解文化。要理解文化及其在社会科学中的关键作用,不妨将其与物理学进行类比。作者在高中学习物理时,我们学到了电子、质子和中子。这些粒子共同构成了原子,原子构成了元素,元素构成了物质。从那时起,学习物理就变得异常困难。物理学家发现了更小的粒子,他们告诉我们,这些粒子是所有物质的基石。这些基石包括夸克、轻子和被称为胶子的幽灵粒子。物理学家假设胶子的存在,因为必须有某种东西将物质维系在一起。夸克和轻子构成物质;胶子维系物质。

To understand human beings’ role as social beings, we must understand culture. To understand culture and its key role in social science, it is helpful to consider an analogy to physics. When the authors studied physics in high school, we were taught that there are electrons, protons, and neutrons. Together, these made up atoms, atoms made up elements, and elements made up matter. Since that time, learning physics has become much more difficult. Physicists have discovered even smaller particles, which they tell us are the building blocks of all matter. These building blocks include quarks, leptons, and ghostly particles called gluons, whose existence is assumed by physicists because something has to hold matter together. Quarks and leptons make up matter; gluons hold matter together.

为什么夸克、轻子和胶子与社会科学息息相关?因为正如物理学家需要假设胶子将物质维系在一起一样,社会科学家也必须假设存在一种力量将社会维系在一起。没有胶子,夸克和轻子就会分崩离析,我们所知的世界也将不复存在。社会也存在着一种类似的力量将社会维系在一起。为什么邻居做错事时,你不直接揍他一顿?为什么国家之间不会为了得到自己想要的东西而发动战争?是什么样的理性使得社会得以延续,并协调约79亿人的个人意志?答案是文化,而与胶子相对应的社会科学概念就是文化,它体现在社会制度、习俗、惯例和法律中。

Why are quarks, leptons, and gluons relevant to social science? Because just as physicists need to assume the existence of gluons to hold matter together, social scientists must assume the existence of a force that holds society together. Without gluons, quarks and leptons would fall apart and the world as we know it would not exist. Society has a similar force holding it together. Why don’t you just haul off and clobber your neighbor when he or she does something wrong? Why don’t countries always enter into war to get what they want? What sensibility makes it possible for society to continue to exist and to coordinate the individual wills of some 7.9 billion individuals? The answer is culture, and the social science equivalent to the gluon is culture, embodied in social institutions, mores, conventions, and laws.

文化与多元文化主义

Culture and Multiculturalism

文化是人类行为及其产物的总模式,体现在思想、言语、行动和物品中。它是从成人传承给儿童的思维方式和行为方式。文化在成长过程中形成,可以被认为是一个社会共同的语言、规范和价值观。文化依赖于通过使用工具、语言和抽象思维系统进行学习的能力。它不仅包括行为模式,还包括激励行为的态度和信念。文化创造了人类和人类社会。反过来,文化是经过几代人的缓慢积累而形成的,也是人类社会及其成员的产物。

Culture is the total pattern of human behavior and its products, embodied in thought, speech, action, and artifacts. It is the way of thinking and doing that is passed on from adults to children in their upbringing and can be thought of as the shared language, norms, and values of a society. Culture is dependent on the capacity for learning through the use of tools, language, and systems of abstract thought. It includes not only patterns of behavior but also the attitudes and beliefs that motivate behavior. Culture creates human beings and human societies. Reciprocally, by slow accumulation over many generations, culture is the product of human societies and of the individuals who compose them.

我们所知的文化经历了漫长的演变过程。文化演化指的是这种渐进、累积的过程。任何现代文化很大程度上都是过去众多个体独创性和创造性的产物,尽管在大多数情况下,任何个人的贡献都非常微小,甚至难以辨认。

Cultures as we know them have evolved through a long process of change. Cultural evolution is the name given to this gradual, accumulative process. Any modern culture is largely the product of the originality and initiative of great numbers of individuals in times past, though in most cases the contribution of any one person has been so small that it cannot even be identified.

由于文化是通过与他人交往而习得的,因此所有人的性格和人格在很大程度上都反映了他们所处的社会。个人从其社会环境中获得知识、技能、习俗、理想、宗教和道德。这通过社会化得以实现。社会化是塑造个人人格的过程,使他们能够适应社会并成为社会的一员。在美国,我们大多数人的感受、思考和行为都像美国公民,因为我们一生都生活在美国主流社会环境中。如果我们从小就只与一群从未接触过美国主流文化的因纽特人交往,我们很可能既无法理解这种文化,也无法适应这种文化。

Because culture is learned by association with other human beings, the character and personality of all human beings are in large part reflections of the society in which they live. Individuals acquire their knowledge, skills, customs, ideals, religion, and morals from their social environment. This is made possible through socialization. Socialization is the process that shapes the personality of individuals so that they can adjust to and become members of society. In the United States, most of us feel, think, and act like US citizens because we have spent all our lives in a mainstream US social environment. If, from earliest childhood, we had associated only with a group of Inuits who never had any contact with mainstream US culture, we probably would neither understand nor feel comfortable with that culture.

这并不意味着同一文化中的所有人的性格都相同​​。我们的家庭背景以及个人社会环境的许多其他方面都存在显著差异。要发展人性,我们必须是人并继承人的潜能,但没有两个人会对同一环境做出完全相同的反应。生物遗传的差异会影响每个人的智力和性情,从而影响思维和行为。对于任何特定个体而言,社会遗传和生物遗传紧密相连,以至于我们永远无法确定它们各自的相对影响。然而,对于我们几乎所有人来说,生活的总体模式在很大程度上是由我们的社会环境决定的。我们所相信、所知或所做的几乎一切都是通过观察他人、倾听他人、阅读和思考他人的著作而学到的。

This does not mean that all people in a culture are alike in their personalities. Significant differences exist in our family backgrounds and in many other aspects of our personal social environment. To develop human nature, we must be human beings and inherit human potentialities, but no two people will ever react to the same environment in exactly the same way. Biologically inherited differences affect the intelligence and temperament of every person and therefore affect thinking and behavior. In any given individual, social inheritance and biological inheritance are so closely bound together that we can never be sure of the relative influence of each. However, for nearly all of us the general pattern of life is largely determined by our social environment. Almost everything we believe or know or do, we learn from observing other people, from listening to other people, or from reading and thinking about what other people have written.

多元文化主义

Multiculturalism

美国并非单一文化,而是多种亚文化交织交织,相互重叠。例如,黑人文化与西班牙裔文化不同,西班牙裔文化与犹太文化不同,犹太文化与美国中西部乡村文化也不同,等等。这些不同文化的融合并非总是一帆风顺,有时甚至会造成破坏。嘻哈音乐、古典音乐和乡村音乐无法构成一首交响乐。尽管如此,美国各种亚文化之间的相似之处却相互交织,使得我们能够称之为一种单一的美国文化,而它实际上是各种亚文化的综合体。

The United States does not have a single culture, but instead has a blend of overlapping subcultures. For example, black culture is different from Hispanic culture, which is different from Jewish culture, which is different from rural midwestern culture, and so on. The blending of these various cultures is not always smooth, and at times is disruptive. Hip-hop, classical, and country music do not a symphony make. Nonetheless, the similarities of the various US subcultures hold together, and allow us to speak of a single US culture, which actually is a composite of various subcultures.

关于文化的政治辩论往往集中在政府应该支持单一文化主义还是多元文化主义。从技术上讲,单一文化主义强调亚文化的共同点,而多元文化主义则强调亚文化之间的差异性。然而, “多元文化主义”一词的含义已经发生了一些变化。具体来说,该词在 20 世纪 80 年代被用来强调大多数大学课程反映了欧洲中心主义的偏见,而忽视了其他美国亚文化。因此,支持多元文化主义就是反对大学课程中的欧洲中心主义偏见。当术语成为政治辩论的一部分时,单一文化主义和多元文化主义经常被视为对立的。我们不这么认为。我们认为两者都是可以支持的。具体来说,如果将美国的单一文化理解为致力于多元化——即文化多样性是好的价值观——那么两者之间就不会有矛盾。这场辩论仅仅是为了找到正确的结合点。单一文化主义的优势在于共享的文化往往能将社会凝聚在一起;多元文化主义的优势在于它融合了多样性,让各个群体尊重自己的历史,并将历史视为更大文化的坚实基石。

Political debates about culture often focus on whether the government should support monoculturalism or multiculturalism. Technically, monoculturaUsm emphasizes the shared aspects of subcultures, whereas multiculturalism emphasizes the differences among subcultures. However, the term multiculturalism has developed a somewhat different meaning. Specihcally, the term was used in the 1980s as a way to emphasize that most university curricula reflected a Eurocentric bias at the expense of other US subcultures. Thus, to support multiculturalism was to be against the Eurocentric bias in university curriculums. As often happens when terms become part of a political debate, monoculturalism and multiculturalism were seen as opposites. We don’t see it that way. We see both as supportable. Specifically, if the US monoculture were understood as being committed to pluralism—the value that cultural diversity is good—there would be no contradiction between the two. The debate is simply about getting the right mix. The advantage of monoculturalism is that shared culture tends to hold society together; the advantage of multiculturalism is that it incorporates diversity and lets subgroups revere their own history and view that history as a strong building block of the larger culture.

美国是一个多元文化交融的国家。© Cineberg/iStock

The US is a blend of cultures. © Cineberg/iStock

文化中的共同信仰

The Shared Beliefs in Culture

文化是一个非常模糊的概念,难以理解。或许理解文化最简单的方法就是回答以下几个问题:

Culture is an enormously vague concept that is difficult to grasp. Perhaps the easiest way to understand culture is to answer a few questions:

  1. 十一至十五岁的孩子应该与父母睡在同一张床上吗?
  2. Should children, age eleven to fifteen, sleep in the same beds as their parents?
  3. 是否应该允许女性开车?
  4. Should women be allowed to drive?
  5. 女性应该接受割礼吗?
  6. Should females be circumcised?
  7. 人们应该在公共海滩穿泳衣吗?
  8. Should people wear swimming suits on public beaches?

我们怀疑,来自美国的你们中的大多数对问题(1)否、(2)是、(3)否和(4)是的回答。我们为什么怀疑这一点?因为你们来自共同的文化。但如果你来自其他国家,或者美国不受主流美国文化影响的地区,你的答案可能会有所不同。例如,根据理查德·施韦德在其著作《男人为什么烧烤?文化多样性食谱》中的说法,在马里和索马里,许多女性对不给女性行割礼的想法感到厌恶。同样,在沙特阿拉伯,一些女性认为女性开车是不合适的。然而,持有这种观点的女性和男性的数量一直在下降,2017 年,沙特阿拉伯政府推翻了禁止女性开车的法律。还有很多例子,但这些足以让你了解文化是如何成为一个社会的共同信仰的。

Most of you from the United States, we suspect, answered the questions (1) no, (2) yes, (3) no, and (4) yes. Why do we suspect that? Because you come from a shared culture. But if you were from another country, or a part of the United States that is not affected by mainstream US culture, your answers would likely be different. For example, according to Richard Shweder in his book, Why Do Men Barbecue? Recipes for Cultural Diversity, in Mali and Somalia many women are repulsed by the idea of not circumcising women. Similarly, in Saudi Arabia some women see it as simply inappropriate for a woman to drive. However, the number of women and men who hold this view has been falling and in 2017, the Saudi Arabian government overturned the law prohibiting women from driving. Many more examples could be provided, but these should be sufficient to give you a sense of how culture is the shared beliefs of a society.

文化与社会本质

Culture and the Nature of Society

尽管每个人的性格很大程度上都受到社会的影响,但显而易见的是,社会的存在离不开构成它的人。社会是由一群作为社群成员生活的个体组成的。每个社会的特征都是由其成员一代代地引入的创新逐渐塑造和改变的。任何个体的影响可能很小,但众多个体在长期的时间内所做出的贡献却可能巨大。

Even though the personality of each individual is in large measure molded by society, its clear that society can have no existence apart from the people who constitute it. Society is a group of individuals living as members of a community. The characteristics of every society are gradually shaped and changed over succeeding generations by innovations introduced by the people who belong to it. The influence of any one individual may be small, but the contributions of many individuals over long periods of time can be great.

我们必须认真审视我们对社会的定义。虽然任何社会的基础都是由个体组成的群体,但与其建立同样重要的是群体在一段时间内的持续存在。一群为观看足球比赛而聚集在一起的人群是一个集合体,但它并非一个社会。它的成员在物理上彼此接近,并且暂时因共同的利益而团结在一起。然而,他们可能拥有的任何团结感都是肤浅的,暂时的。游戏结束后,他们就会解散。他们在一起的时间不足以组织成一个社会。但如果同一群人被困在一个无人居住的岛上一年,他们就会被迫组织起来,形成一个社会。1他们会发展出共同的理念、兴趣和共同生活和工作的技能。正是这种作为社区共同生活的意识,才是社会的显著特征。

It is important to pay close attention to our definition of society. Though the basis of any society is a group of individuals, equally important to its establishment is the continued existence of the group over a period of time. A crowd brought together for a football game is an aggregate, but it is not a society. Its members are physically close together, and for the moment are united by a common interest. However, any sense of unity they may have is superficial and temporary. When the game is over, they disperse. They are not together long enough to organize into a society. But if the same people were marooned for a year on an uninhabited island, they would be forced to organize themselves into a society.1 They would develop common ideas, interests, and techniques for living and working together. It is the sense of living together as a community that distinguishes a society.

文化及其在人类社会中的作用

Culture and Its Role in Human Societies

文化的定义存在诸多方面,难以准确定义。但我们先前的定义或许最为贴切。文化是一个社会成员所遵循的生活方式。它涵盖所有知识、信仰、艺术、道德、法律、习俗以及人类作为社会成员所获得的其他能力。

There is a problem in precisely defining culture because it has a variety of aspects. But our earlier definition of it is probably the best. Culture is the way of life that the people of a society follow. It includes all knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, laws, customs, and any other capabilities acquired by a human being as a member of society.

简而言之,文化是人类行为及其产物的总模式,体现在思想、言语、行动和人工制品中。文化也依赖于通过使用工具、语言和抽象思维系统进行学习的能力。

In short, culture is the total pattern of human behavior and its products embodied in thought, speech, action, and artifacts. Culture is also dependent on the capacity for learning through the use of tools, language, and systems of abstract thought.

正如你所见,一个社会的文化涵盖了其成员生活中所有源于人类的事物——即他们通过与他人直接或间接接触而习得的一切。它包括日常生活中的习惯行为方式、宗教信仰、道德标准、家庭生活的组织方式、提供食物和住所的方式、语言、政府以及艺术表达形式。

As you can see, the culture of a society includes everything of human origin in the lives of its members—that is, everything they learn through their direct or indirect contacts with other people. It includes the customary ways of behaving in everyday life, religious beliefs, moral standards, the way family life is organized, the methods used to provide food and shelter, language, government, and forms of artistic expression.

文化元素

The Elements of Culture

文化只有通过人类的交往才能发展,因此以社会为前提;同时,文化也是人类社会得以存在的基础。只有当人们在一定程度上发展出共同的文化时,他们才能作为一个有组织的群体发挥作用,因为只有这样,他们才知道彼此应该期待什么,以及如何行动才能满足群体的需求。社会之所以能够存在,是因为人类有能力创造文化,并且同样重要的是,有能力与同时代的人分享文化,并将其传承给后代。文化创造社会,社会依赖于文化。简而言之,文化体现了社会规范(习俗、习俗和法律)和制度,以及社会的技术、物质产品和价值观。图4.1展示了社会赖以生存的文化要素。让我们简要地探讨一下文化的一些要素。

Culture develops only through the association of human beings and thus presupposes society; at the same time, culture is what makes a human society possible. Only when people develop in some degree a common culture can they function as an organized group, for only then do they know what to expect of one another and how to behave to meet the requirements of the group. A society can exist because human beings have the capacity for creating culture and, what is equally important, for sharing it with their contemporaries and transmitting it to succeeding generations. Culture creates societies and societies depend on culture. In short, culture embodies social norms (its conventions, mores, and laws) and institutions, together with a society’s technology, its material products, and its values. Figure 4.1 presents the elements of culture upon which society rests. Let us consider briefly some of the elements of culture.

图4.1文化的要素

Figure 4.1The elements of culture.

社会规范:习俗、民情和法律习俗是一个群体的简单的日常风俗,代表着通常的行为方式。习俗变化得很慢,其中许多习俗非常持久。在我们的社会中,睡在床上、在餐桌上吃饭、用刀、叉和勺子吃东西以及在街上和熟人打招呼都是习惯或惯例。所有这些都是习俗。习俗是既定的习俗,我们很少赋予其道德意义。我们可能认为,习俗与我们不同的人本身就不同,但我们会尝试理解这些差异,而不是因为他们的差异而排斥他们。例如,我们可能会对剃光头的女人感到好奇,但我们的社会实践是尝试表现得好像我们没有注意到任何异常。

Social Norms: Conventions, Mores, and Laws Conventions are the simple, everyday customs of a group that represent the usual ways of behaving. Conventions change slowly, and many of them are very persistent. In our society, it is customary or conventional to sleep on a bed; to eat at a table; to handle our food with knives, forks, and spoons; and to greet an acquaintance on the street. All these are conventions. Conventions are established customs to which we attach little moral significance. We may think that people whose conventions are different from ours are themselves different, but we try to understand those differences, not ostracize people because of their differences. For example, we will probably wonder about a woman who shaves her head, but our social practice will be to try to act as if we notice nothing unusual.

习俗(发音为mor-rays)是指违反后将产生严重后果的习俗。这些习俗包括社会所有成员普遍遵守的风俗习惯,以确保文化的延续。无视习俗的人通常被视为古怪或反常——他们的性格定义更是怪异至极。虽然违反社会习俗不一定会入狱,但会以同伴的反对形式遭受社会惩罚。例如,一位理赔员出现在去保险公司办理保险,并且完全脱光衣服,会违反社会习俗,即使没有因猥亵暴露而被捕,也会面临非正式的惩罚。另一方面,穿着便装参加婚宴的人,仅仅违反了一项习俗。

Mores (pronounced mor-rays) are conventions that would have serious consequences if they were violated. They include those customs that must generally be observed by all members of a society for the culture to survive. People who disregard mores are usually seen as more than slightly odd or eccentric—their character definitions are beyond weird. Although a violation of a society’s mores would not necessarily land a person in jail, it would incur social punishment in the form of peer disapproval. For example, a claims adjuster who showed up at the insurance office and completely disrobed would have violated one of society’s mores and, even if not arrested for indecent exposure, would nevertheless face informal punishment. On the other hand, a person who wears informal clothing to a wedding reception is merely violating a convention.

与习俗和惯例(它们仅仅是人们理解的规范群体行为的习惯)相比,法律更为精确,通常被记录、编纂和执行,作为确保公众服从的手段。法律是由某个权威机构在一个社区内制定的、适用于其人民的原则和规章,可以是立法形式,也可以是经司法判决认可和执行的政策形式。违反法律可能会给违法者带来严厉的惩罚和/或后果。超速行驶只会被处以小额罚款,而预谋杀人则可能被判处死刑,至少在某些州是这样。不同社会对违法行为的定义和处罚各不相同。例如,在一些伊斯兰社会,女性在公共场合不遮盖面部可能是违法的,偷窃可能会被处以断手的惩罚。在美国,没有关于遮盖面部的法律,偷窃最多只会被判入狱。

In contrast to mores and conventions, which are merely customs taken as understood in governing the conduct of the group, laws are more exact, and are generally recorded, codified, and enforced as a means of securing public obedience. Laws are the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the form of legislation or of policies recognized and enforced by judicial decision. Violations of laws may carry severe punishments and/or ramifications for the offender. Being caught speeding results in a small fine, whereas premeditated murder may be punishable, at least in some states, by death. What is against the law and the punishment for violation of laws vary in different societies. For example, in some Islamic societies it may be against the law for a woman to appear in public with her face uncovered, and stealing may be punished by the loss of one’s hand. In the United States, there are no laws about covering one’s face, and stealing results in a jail sentence at most.

社会制度 社会制度是一种既定的复杂行为模式,许多人参与其中,以促进重要的群体利益。制度通常围绕某些核心利益或需求而组织。例如,政府为个人提供必要的秩序和协调。学校为年轻人提供正规教育,而家庭作为所有社会制度中最基本的机构之一,帮助满足日常生活中的许多需求,例如住所、食物、亲密陪伴和情感。教堂、寺庙、清真寺和犹太教堂等机构使人们能够通过与他人一起按照既定仪式崇拜一个或多个神灵来表达自己的宗教信仰。社会制度不仅提供秩序和协调,而且还促进社会变革。例如,宗教团体在美国民权运动中发挥了重要作用,这场运动迫使美国社会更加平等地对待非裔美国人,并废除了一些公然歧视性的法律。

Social Institutions A social institution is an established complex pattern of behavior in which a number of persons participate in order to further important group interests. Institutions are usually organized around some central interest or need. The government, for example, provides the necessary order and coordination among individuals. The school provides for formal education of the young, while the family, one of the most basic of all social institutions, helps meet many of the needs of daily life, such as those for shelter, food, close companionship, and affection. The church, temple, mosque, and synagogue are the institutions that enable people to express their religious beliefs by joining others in worshipping a deity or deities in established rituals. Social institutions not only provide order and coordination, but they also provide for social change. For example, religious groups played a significant role in the civil rights movement in the United States, a movement that forced US society to treat African Americans more equitably and to remove some of its blatantly discriminatory laws.

物质产品严格来说,文化从来都不是物质的。它存在于人们的思想和个性中,是人们从社会环境中习得的东西——态度、信仰、知识和行为方式。然而,在每一种文化中,关于如何生产和使用各种物质产品(包括食物、衣服、房屋、工具、机器和艺术品)的知识都至关重要。文化物品(人工制品)是人类技艺和努力的产物,对社会的运转至关重要。文化物品不仅仅是创造它们的文化的表达;它们之所以对社会的运转至关重要,是因为没有它们,人们就无法进行日常生活的必要活动。这在现代工业社会中尤为明显。如果这样的社会不能使用计算机、飞机、汽车和卡车、电话、发电厂、工厂及其机器、超市和快餐店等等,它就会陷入瘫痪。

Material Products Strictly speaking, culture is never material. It is in the minds and personalities of people. It is what they have learned from their social environment—attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and ways of behaving. However, in every culture, knowledge of how to produce and use a variety of material products, including food, clothing, houses, tools, machines, and works of art, is important. Cultural objects (artifacts) are products of human skill and effort that are essential to the functioning of a society. Cultural objects are more than mere expressions of the culture that produces them; they become essential to its functioning because without them people could not carry on the necessary activities of daily life. This is strikingly true in a modern industrial society. Such a society would be paralyzed if it could not use computers, airplanes, cars and trucks, telephones, power plants, factories and their machines, supermarkets, and fast-food outlets, to name a few.

语言 语言是词汇的集合,以及同一社群或民族、同一地理区域或同一文化传统的人们共同使用的词汇体系。语言是人类社会和文化的内在组成部分。本杰明·李·沃尔夫认为,每一种特定的语言都体现并传播着一种世界观。因此,使用同一种语言的群体会以相同的文化基调进行交流。文化假设和观察结果被固化在一个社会的语言中。例如,多语言人群之间的交流会传递不同社会之间的文化差异。

Language Language is a body of words and the system for their use common to a people of the same community or nation, the same geographical area, or the same cultural tradition. Language is intrinsic in the societies and cultures of humans. Benjamin Lee Whorf argued that each particular language embodies and propagates a worldview. Groups of people speaking the same language, therefore, communicate in the same cultural tone. Cultural assumptions and observations are locked into a society’s language. For instance, communication between multilingual people transmits cultural differences between societies.

语言在文化的发展和传播中发挥着核心作用。它促进沟通,而沟通对于协调活动至关重要。它使不同文化能够保存和传播其历史知识。书写使语言有了更多的用途,拓展了其存储和积累知识的能力。书写使文化得以保存并以更广泛的方式传承。但语言也带来了局限性。语言的结构影响着个人看待问题的方式,因此可能包含许多隐藏的偏见。

Language plays a central role in the development and transmission of culture. It allows communication, which is essential for the coordination of activities. It allows cultures to save and transmit a knowledge of their history. Writing allows many further uses of language, widening its ability to store and accumulate knowledge. Writing allows cultures to be preserved and passed on in expanded ways. But language also creates limitations. The structure of the language influences the way individuals look at issues and can therefore incorporate many hidden biases.

社会价值观社会价值观是推动机构有效运作的动力。社会价值观是特定社会所珍视的事物,因为人们相信它们有助于改善生活和增进普遍福祉。在我们的文化环境中,诚实、勇气、正义以及尊重法律和他人权利都是备受推崇的社会价值观。经济成功、健康和教育也同样如此,只不过程度略有不同。

Social Values Social values are the motivating power that makes institutions function effectively. They are the things that a given society considers desirable because they are believed to contribute to a good life and the general welfare. In our cultural environment, honesty, courage, justice, and respect for law and for the rights of others are highly regarded social values. So also, on a somewhat different level, are financial success, health, and education.

个人的欲望往往反映其所属社会所强调的价值观。美国社会常被说成是一个物质主义社会。这种描述或许并非完全正确,但也不无道理。在现代美国,我们高度推崇商业、娱乐和体育领域的成功,并高度重视提高生活水平和消除贫困。正因为我们如此重视物质福利,许多人开始将赚取越来越多的金钱视为人生的主要目标。当然,其他人仅仅将金钱视为实现更重要目标的一种手段。这些更重要的目标可能涉及一些“更高”的社会价值观,例如子女的教育;慈善事业;对艺术、科学和宗教的欣赏和鼓励;以及提供公共服务。

Individuals’ desires tend to reflect the values stressed in the societies to which they belong. Society in the United States is often said to be materialistic. This may not be a wholly correct characterization; yet it contains an element of truth. In our modern United States, we have great respect for success in business, entertainment, and sports, and we place great emphasis on the importance of raising standards of living and abolishing poverty. Because we put such a high value on material welfare, many of our people have come to regard the earning of more and more money as their major life objective. Others, of course, look on money merely as a means to achieve more important objectives. These more important objectives may involve such “higher” social values as the education of one’s children; charity; the appreciation and encouragement of art, science, and religion; and the rendering of public service.

社会价值观使机构有效运作。例如,教堂、寺庙、清真寺或犹太教堂,只有当其大部分成员坚信至高无上的存在或精神导师,并相信其宗教组织是灵魂成长和构建美好社会的重要工具时,才能成为社会中一股活跃的力量。当宗教对社会产生强大影响时,它通常是一种倾向于维护既定道德价值观的保守力量。

Social values make institutions function effectively. The church, temple, mosque, or synagogue, for instance, will be a dynamic force in society only as long as a large portion of their members firmly believe in a supreme being or spiritual guide and have faith that their religious organization is an essential instrument for the growth of the soul and the creation of a good society. Where religion has a strong hold on a society, it is usually a conservative force tending to preserve established moral values.

社会价值观是相对的,而非绝对的。它们往往在不同文化之间差异巨大,每个人都会从自身文化中习得对可取与不可取、善恶与对错的观念。在某些社会中,婚前性行为被视为大罪;而在另一些社会中,婚前性行为则是被允许的,甚至是被期待的。在某些社会中,女性必须非常丰满才算美丽;而在另一些社会中,她们必须相当苗条。在大多数(即便不是所有)现代社会中,杀婴被视为令人恐惧的行为,但在少数部落社会中,在某些情况下——例如,如果婴儿有身体残疾——杀婴则被视为值得称赞的行为。

Social values are relative rather than absolute. They often vary widely from one culture to another, and each individual acquires from his or her own culture ideas of what is desirable or undesirable, good or bad, right or wrong. In some societies, sexual relations before marriage are regarded as a cardinal sin; in others, they are permitted or even expected. In some societies, women must be very plump to be regarded as beautiful; in others, they must be rather slim. In most if not in all modern societies, the killing of infants is regarded with horror, but a few tribal societies see it as commendable under certain circumstances—for instance, if the infants have physical disabilities.

文化融合

Cultural Integration

文化或社会包含所有文化中某些共同的方面。这些方面或特质被称为普遍性。文化普遍性是指存在于所有文化中的文化特征。例如,宗教是一种文化普遍性,某种形式的政府、家庭生活和民族理想的存在也是一种文化普遍性。文化替代性是指其他文化不一定具有的文化特征。例如,有些文化可能将老年人置于从属地位,而另一些文化则可能将老年人置于尊贵地位。因此,尊崇老年是一种文化替代性;并非所有社会都这样做。

Cultures or societies contain certain aspects that are similar among all cultures. These aspects or traits are called universals. A cultural universal is an aspect of culture that is found in all cultures. Religion, for example, is a cultural universal, as is the existence of some form of government, family life, and national ideals. Cultural alternatives are those cultural characteristics not necessarily shared by other cultures. For example, some cultures might place the elderly in a subordinate role, whereas others might place them in an exalted role. Therefore, exalting old age is a cultural alternative; not all societies do it.

特质不仅在不同文化之间有所差异,在同一文化内部也存在差异。文化融合是指一种文化内部一致性和同质性的程度。在像美国这样庞大而复杂的现代文化中,多样性往往更高。而在像亚马逊雨林中的土著雅赫玛部落这样规模较小、前文字时代的文化中,多样性往往较低。因此,文化更加统一。

Traits differ not only among cultures; they also differ within cultures. Cultural integration is the degree to which a culture is internally consistent and homogeneous. In large, complex modern cultures such as the United States, there tends to be more diversity. In small, preliterate cultures such as that of the indigenous Yahma tribe that lives in the Amazon, there tends to be less diversity. Thus, cultures are more unified.

社会制度的结构随着时间而改变

The structure of social institutions change over time.

© www.cartoonstock.com

© www.cartoonstock.com

美国文化高度重视思想和商品的选择自由,生活也因此更加复杂,压力也更大。许多社会问题,例如犯罪、青少年叛逆、酗酒吸毒以及情绪障碍,都源于我们更强大的选择能力。例如,如果文化决定了你毕业后从事什么工作,你的生活压力可能会小一些。即使是高度重视自由的文化,也必须在共同的文化特质与非共同特质的潜在瓦解力量之间取得某种平衡。自1960年左右以来,我们在美国看到,社会行为共识的衰落,这种共识在20世纪初更为典型。一些社会科学家认为,这种灵活的价值体系可能会给我们的社会带来严重的问题。至于他们的观点是否正确,以及我们的社会是否会走向更加共同的文化特质,还有待观察。

In US culture, which greatly values freedom of choice with respect to both ideas and commodities, life is more complex and stressful. Many social problems such as crime, teenage rebellion, alcohol and drug abuse, and emotional disorders result from our greater ability to choose options. For example, if culture determined what job you would have when you graduate, your life would probably be less stressful. Even cultures that place a high value on freedom must achieve some measure of balance between shared cultural traits and the potentially disintegrative forces of nonshared traits. Since about 1960, we have seen in the United States a decline in the social behavioral consensus that was more typical of the earlier years of the twentieth century. Some social scientists believe that this flexible value system could cause serious trouble for our society. Whether they are right, and whether our society will move toward more shared cultural traits, remains to be seen.

由此可见,文化是维系社会凝聚力的粘合剂,但如同粘合剂一样,它也可能给社会带来困境。原因在于,社会处于不断转型之中,要想成功,一个社会必须适应新技术以及与其他社会的关系。在一个时期真正维系社会的粘合剂,在另一个时期可能就变成了困住部分社会成员的黏糊糊的烂摊子。因此,要理解文化在社会中的作用,我们必须思考社会变革的过程、促成变革的因素以及变革对文化的影响。

As you can see, culture is the glue that holds society together, but like glue it can also cause difficulties for society. The reason is that societies are in constant transition, and to be successful a society must adjust to new technologies and relations with other societies. The glue that really held society together in one time period may be the sticky mess that in another time period entraps some members of society. Therefore, to understand the role of culture in society, we must consider the process of social change, the factors that contribute to that change, and the effect that change has on culture.

文化、社会和社会变革

Culture, Society, and Social Change

一个社会的文化会不断演变以适应新的形势。例如,战争几乎可以瞬间带来变化,并将社会的利益、金钱和精力集中在一个目标上——胜利。战争的重心被完全集中在与战争相关的活动上,而不是更广泛的活动上。无论一个国家是胜是败,战后社会都会与战前社会发生实质性的变化。其中一些变化是对手战争努力的结果,另一些变化则是与其他社会成员互动的结果。

The culture of a society is constantly evolving to fit new situations. For instance, wars can create almost instantaneous change and can focus a society’s interest, money, and energy on a single goal—winning. Total emphasis is placed on war-related activities rather than on a more diverse range of activities. Whether a country wins or loses, the postwar society will substantively differ from the prewar society. Some of these changes will be the result of an opponent’s war effort, and others will be the result of interaction with members of other societies.

在人类社会发展的过程中,社会变革的速度逐渐加快。早期,变革起步缓慢。数千年前,所有人类都属于小型的、尚未形成文字的群体。尽管这些群体在文化的性质和复杂性上差异巨大,但总体而言,每个群体的风俗习惯和传统都根深蒂固,以至于其成员往往在世世代代都遵循着大致相同的生活方式。随后,社会变革的速度加快。实际上,社会变革就像一个滚下山坡的雪球。起初,它规模很小,移动缓慢;然后,随着积雪越来越多,规模越来越大,它便获得了动力。

The rate of social change has gradually gained momentum through the course of human social development. In early times, it started slowly. Many thousands of years ago, all human beings belonged to small, preliterate groups. Though the groups varied greatly in the nature and complexity of their cultures, as a rule the customs and traditions of each were so firmly established that its members tended to follow much the same way of life over a great many generations. Then the rate of social change increased. In effect, social change has behaved much like a snowball rolling down a hill. First, it starts out small and moves slowly; then, as it picks up more snow and gets larger, it gains momentum.

某些因素对加速变革尤为重要。其中最突出的是农业的发展。农作物的种植使人们能够居住在永久性住所,从而放弃了以前的游牧生活方式。通过储存增加食物供应带来了人口的增长,并逐渐促进了城镇的发展。另一个重要因素是文字的发明,它使得记录人类知识并将其比以往更充分地传承给后代成为可能。随着人类知识总量的增加,其积累的速度也随之加快。

Certain factors have been especially important in contributing to an increased rate of change. Outstanding among these is the development of agriculture. The growing of crops allowed people to live in permanent dwellings, abandoning their former nomadic lifestyle. Increasing the food supply through storage brought about an increase in population and, gradually, the growth of towns and cities. Another important factor is the invention of writing, which made it possible to record human knowledge and to transmit it to future generations more adequately than ever before. As the sum total of human knowledge increased, the rate of its accumulation accelerated.

后来的发展大大加快了社会变革的速度,包括印刷术的发明、现代科学的兴起以及 18 世纪中叶始于英国的工业革命。工业革命代表了生产方式的转变;它意味着手工工具被机器和电动工具所取代,并开启了从小规模农业向大规模工业发展的趋势。这需要工厂拥有大量的工人,减少田间地头的工人,从而促进了城市化——人们从农村向城市的流动。一个较近的加速变革的重要因素是通过快速交通和通信的发展消除了距离。今天,我们可以使用卫星传输在世界各地同步直播正在发生或形成中的事件和想法。

Later developments that did much to speed up the rate of social change include the invention of printing, the rise of modern science, and the Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain in the mid-1700s. The Industrial Revolution represented a shift in the methods of production; it entailed the replacement of hand tools by machines and power tools, and initiated the movement away from small-scale agriculture to the development of largescale industry This necessitated enormous numbers of workers for the factories, fewer workers in the fields, and therefore facilitated urbanization—the movement of people from rural to urban areas. A more recent factor of great importance in accelerating change has been the annihilation of distance through the development of rapid transportation and communication. Today, we can use satellite transmission to simulcast events and ideas all around the world while they are actually happening or being formulated.

不仅技术变革的速度在加快,不同文化之间的互动也在不断增多。这在发展中国家尤为明显。西方科技正以更快的速度在全球传播,许多发展中国家可能面临进一步西化。互联网——一套互联的计算机系统,人们可以通过它进行交流和信息传递——已经改变了人与人之间的沟通方式,并正在将我们的世界变成一个庞大的社群。通过Facebook、Snapchat、Twitter和LinkedIn等互联网门户网站和平台进行社交互动,人们正在以前所未有的方式与他人互动,从而改变着社群的构成和构成。(老年人通常比年轻人更难适应新技术带来的社交互动方式。)

Not only is the rate of technological change increasing, but so is the interaction among cultures. This is especially true in developing countries. Western science and technology are now spreading throughout the world at an accelerating pace, and further westernization is a likely prospect for many developing countries. The Internet—an interconnected set of computers through which people can communicate and transfer information—has transformed communication among individuals and is in the process of making our world one enormous community. With social interaction through Internet portals and platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, and Linkedln, people are interacting with others in ways that were previously impossible, changing what determines and constitutes a community. (Older people often have a much harder time adapting to the avenues of social interaction, which the new technology allows, than do younger people.)

与遥远国度日益密切的联系导致世界各国人民在风俗习惯、使用的产品以及谋生方式上变得越来越相似。然而,不同民族之间仍然存在着巨大的文化差异,而且可能永远不会完全消失。如今,像尼日利亚这样的国家内部,以及像印度和巴基斯坦这样的国家之间,仇恨似乎难以根除。然而,总体而言,文化差异正在缩小,而且缩小的速度比以往任何时候都要快。

One result of increasingly close contacts with distant lands is that the peoples of the world are becoming more and more alike in their customs, the products they use, and the ways they earn a living. Wide cultural differences among peoples can still be found and may never completely disappear. Today, bitter enmities seem ineradicable within countries such as Nigeria and between countries such as India and Pakistan. However, cultural differences are, on the whole, diminishing, and at a more rapid rate than ever before.

然而,如果将文化特征的传播视为单行道,那就错了。其他大陆和社会的服饰风格、饮食特色、艺术形式和思维方式正在给我们自己的文化带来变化。变化本身并不一定好或坏,它只意味着旧环境被新环境所取代。进化比变化具有更明确的含义。进化意味着从简单的生活、艺术、技术或社会组织形式逐渐发展到更复杂的形式。社会进化是一个漫长而复杂的变化和互动过程,文化正是在此过程中逐渐发展起来的。这种变化是否可取尚有争议。从西方以民族为中心的视角来看,我们常常认为变化就是进步,但从更广阔的角度来看,变化不一定是进步——它可能是倒退的变化。除非我们知道人生目标是什么,以及这些变化如何帮助我们实现这些目标,否则变化不能被视为进步。人们对人生目标应该是什么有不同的看法;因此,对社会进化是否进步的看法也各不相同。

We would be wrong, however, to see the diffusion of cultural traits as a one-way street. Styles of dress, food specialties, art forms, and modes of thought in other continents and societies are bringing changes to our own culture. Change in itself is not necessarily good or bad. It only means that old situations are replaced with new ones. Evolution has more definite implications than change. Evolution implies a gradual development from simpler forms of life, art, technology, or social organization to more complex forms. Social evolution is the long and complex process of change and interaction by which cultures gradually develop. Whether this change is desirable is debatable. From a Western, ethnocentric perspective, we often think of change as progress, but from a broader perspective, change is not necessarily progress—it may be regressive change. Change cannot be seen as progress unless we know what the life goals are and how those changes help us meet those goals. Views of what life goals should be differ; hence, views of whether social evolution is progressive differ.

流行的社会变革理论

Popular Theories of Social Change

人类倾向于美化过去。有些人坚信,他们青春和童年的美好时光远胜于现在。最早的社会变革理论之一来自一些希腊哲学家,他们认为人类曾经生活在一个理想的黄金时代。从这个时代开始,我们逐渐走向白银时代,然后是青铜时代,最后是铁器时代。

Human beings have a tendency to glorify the past. Some become firmly convinced that the good old days of their youth and childhood were far superior to the present. One of the earliest theories of social change was held by certain Greek philosophers who believed that humankind once lived in an ideal golden age. From this, we gradually descended to a silver, then a bronze, and finally an iron age.

过去一两个世纪里,欧美盛行着一种截然相反的社会变革理论。这就是“进步必然”的信条,相信世界正在变得越来越好。即使是两次世界大战和无数次小规模战争,也无法动摇那些坚定信奉这一信条的人的信念。

A quite opposite theory of social change has been popular in Europe and the United States in the last century or two. This is the doctrine of inevitable progress, the belief that the world is getting better and better. Not even two world wars and a multitude of smaller wars have been able to shake the faith of those who firmly hold this doctrine.

奥斯瓦尔德·斯宾格勒和阿诺德·汤因比推广的另一种社会变革理论认为,变革具有周期性。根据他们的理论,制度、社会和文明都会经历增长、高潮和衰落的循环。现代文明也不例外,最终也注定要瓦解。这种社会变革周期理论基于历史重演的理念。一些周期理论家认为,现代文明正处于衰落的边缘,他们以某些古代文明的命运为例来佐证这一观点,包括古希腊和罗马帝国。周期理论的差异很大,但它们都倾向于支持这样的论点:文明首先进步,最终达到顶峰,最后衰落。

Another theory of social change, popularized by Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee, is that such change runs in cycles. According to their theory, institutions, societies, and civilizations pass through cycles of growth, climax, and decline. Modern civilization is no exception and is bound ultimately to disintegrate. This cycle theory of social change is based on the idea that history repeats itself. Some cycle theorists maintain that modern civilization is now on the verge of a decline, and to support this contention they point to the fate of certain past civilizations, including ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Cycle theories vary considerably, but they all tend to support the thesis that civilizations first advance, ultimately reach a peak, and finally decline.

其他解释社会变革的尝试依赖于超自然力量、种族特征、经济条件、文化传播或发明创造。然而,任何特定的文化都是由太多因素共同作用的结果,任何简单的公式都无法充分解释。但有一点是肯定的:变革不可避免。无论身处何方,人类与环境的关系都是动态的,而这种动态关系又会产生变化。

Other attempts to explain social change have relied on the supernatural, racial characteristics, economic conditions, cultural diffusion, or invention. Any given culture, however, is the result of too many factors to be explained adequately by any simple formula. Yet one thing is sure: Change is inevitable. Humans’ relationship to their environment is dynamic, no matter where they live, and this dynamic relationship produces change.

导致文化变迁的因素

Factors Causing Cultural Change

现在,我们将探讨一些引发文化变迁的重要社会力量,以及这些变迁所带来的问题。我们首先讨论技术发展;然后探讨宗教、意识形态、文化传播、战争、有计划的群体行动、地理和气候等因素的作用。

We now look at some of the most important social forces that cause cultural change, together with the problems that change has brought about. We begin with a discussion of technological development; then we examine the role of religion, ideologies, cultural diffusion, wars, planned group action, geography, and climate.

技术发展技术发展始于发现和发明。发现是指对物理或社会环境的某种前所未有的了解。过去,探险家发现了新的岛屿和大陆,天文学家发现了天体运动的规律,人类学家发现了不同前文字时代文化之间许多有趣的差异。关于自然界的发现常常为发明创造提供基础。例如,一些伟大的科学家对电的发现,使托马斯·爱迪生得以发明白炽电灯泡和其他有用的设备。

Technological Development Technological development begins with discovery and invention. A discovery is something learned about the physical or social environment that was not known before. In the past, explorers have discovered new islands and continents, astronomers have discovered laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, and anthropologists have discovered many interesting differences between the cultures of preliterate peoples. Discoveries about the natural world often furnish the basis for inventions. For example, the discoveries about electricity from some of the great scientists made it possible for Thomas Edison to invent the incandescent electric lightbulb and other useful devices.

发明是一种新的做事方式,或是为了特定目的而开发的新物品或机械装置。它是由一个社会群体中的一个或多个个体成员发明的文化创新。发明可以是物质的,也可以是非物质的。像割草机和飞机这样常见的机器就是物质发明。养老保险和轮作则是非物质发明的例子。所有非物质发明中最伟大的一项是拉丁字母,它使得我们今天的书写和印刷体系成为可能。

An invention is a new way of doing something or a new object or mechanical device developed to serve some specific purpose. It is a cultural innovation devised by one or several individual members of a social group. Inventions may be either material or nonmaterial. Familiar machines such as the lawn tractor and the airplane are material inventions. Old-age insurance and crop rotation are examples of nonmaterial inventions. One of the greatest of all nonmaterial inventions was the Latin alphabet, which made possible our present system of writing and printing.

发明实际上是一种特殊的发现,因此两者之间没有明确的界限。我们可以把用燧石撞击取火的过程称为发现,也可以把发明称为发明。所有机械发明都涉及到这样一个发现:材料以某种方式组合和使用会产生特定的预期结果。发明带来了技术的变革,在现代社会中,技术变革一直是社会变革背后的强大力量。

An invention is really a special kind of discovery, and hence no sharp line can be drawn between the two. We can call the making of fire by striking together flint stones either a discovery or an invention. All mechanical inventions involve the discovery that materials combined and used in certain ways will produce certain desired results. Inventions bring about changes in technology, and in modern societies technological change has been a powerful force behind social change.

一个很好的例子就是计算机,它正在从多方面改变我们的生活方式和文化。计算机化的机器人正在取代许多工作岗位上的工人,微型机器人正在被开发用于医疗用途,互联网正在改变我们购物和与他人沟通的方式。同样,生物技术的发展也在改变我们的生活,并且很快可能让我们能够选择孩子的性格特征并影响医疗治疗。

A good example is the computer, which is changing our lifestyle and culture in many ways. Computerized robots are replacing workers in many jobs, tiny robots are being developed for medical uses, and the Internet is changing the way we shop and communicate with others. Similarly, developments in biotechnology are changing our lives and soon may make it possible for us to choose characteristics for our children and to influence medical treatment.

事实上,有人认为科技和信息时代不仅改变了我们的文化,更正在创造一种全新的文化。互联网催生了一个自主社会,世界各地的人们在这里互动,共同构建了数字世界的社会规范和惯例。这种网络文化并非基于地理上的接近,而是由独特的词汇、根植的制度、共同的历史和共同的价值观所凝聚。数十亿人不分国籍,每天在网上构建的社群正在改变我们对文化在日益全球化的世界中扮演的角色的看法。

In fact, some would argue that technology and the information age are not just changing our culture, but are creating a new culture entirely. The Internet has enabled the birth of an autonomous society, where people all over the world interact to form the social norms and conventions of a digital world. Instead of being based on geographical proximity, this online culture is united by a unique vocabulary, anchoring institutions, a common history, and shared values. The community fostered online every day between billions of people regardless of nationality is changing the way that we see the role of culture in our increasingly globalized world.

技术变革对于理解社会变得如此重要,以至于我们用整整一章(第 6 章)来更深入地探讨这些问题。

Technological change has become so important to understanding society that we devote an entire chapter, Chapter 6, to a deeper consideration of the issues.

文化传播:一旦一种新的文化元素在一个社会中根深蒂固,它就可能传播到其他社会。文化传播是指文化特征从一个社会群体传播到另一个社会群体。换句话说,并非所有特定群体文化中的元素都是在该群体内部发明或发展起来的。在大多数情况下,任何文化的大部分内容都是从其他文化中借鉴而来。在大多数社会中,文化传播是社会变革中极其重要的因素。与外界隔绝的社会往往处于停滞状态,而那些能够与其他群体轻松沟通的社会则会不断获得新的文化元素。然而,接触并不总是导致文化传播。例如,美国的阿米什人社会与美国主流文化有着密切的接触。尽管存在这种接触,阿米什人社会仍然通过刻意的划分保持着其独特的文化身份,并回避了许多现代科技发展。

Cultural Diffusion Once a new cultural element is well established in one society, it may spread to others. Cultural diffusion is the name given to the spread of cultural traits from one social group to another. In other words, not all the elements found in the culture of a given group were invented or developed within that group. In most cases, the greater part of the content of any culture has been borrowed from other cultures. In most societies, cultural diffusion is an extremely important factor in social change. Societies isolated from outside contacts tend to be static, whereas those that can readily communicate with other groups constantly acquire new cultural elements. However, contact does not always lead to cultural diffusion. For example, the Amish society in the United States has significant contact with mainstream US culture. Despite this contact, Amish society has maintained its separate cultural identity through deliberate delineation and has shunned many modern technological developments.

文化传播比任何其他因素都更能促进西方文明的发展。西方文明孕育于欧洲,其中心至今仍在那里。然而,这种文明的大部分基本要素并非源自欧洲,而是从世界其他地区的其他民族借鉴而来。我们现代的数字系统比罗马的数字系统灵活得多,它借鉴自阿拉伯人,而阿拉伯人又从印度的印度教徒那里借鉴而来。如果没有这种数字系统或一个有效的替代品,我们几乎不可能进行如今商业和科学所需的数学计算。同样,我们的字母表,经过修改后用于所有欧洲语言的书写和印刷,最初是从非洲的腓尼基人那里借鉴而来的。他们,或者操着类似闪米特语的邻近民族,很可能是最初的发明者。2

Cultural diffusion, more than any other factor, has been responsible for the development of Western civilization. Western civilization was nurtured in Europe, and its center is still there. Yet most of the basic elements of this civilization did not originate in Europe but were borrowed from other peoples in other parts of the world. Our modern number system, so much more flexible than that of the Romans, was borrowed from the Arabs, who in turn borrowed it from the Hindus in India. Without this number system or a good substitute, it would be almost impossible for us to carry on the mathematical calculations now required by both business and science. Again, our alphabet, which with modifications is used for writing and printing all European languages, was borrowed originally from the Phoenicians of Africa. It seems probable that they, or a neighboring people speaking a similar Semitic language, were the original inventors.2

思想与意识形态社会变革也可能由新思想引发。相对简单、实用的思想可能会催生出一些发明,这些发明很快就会被接受,并成为文化模式中公认的组成部分——例如一种新型舞蹈、一种新型商业公司或一种新型机械装置。然而,并非所有新思想都属于此类。有些新思想代表着社会态度和基本社会价值观的重大变化。这些思想最终可能会在人们的思想中产生强大的影响力,就像法国大革命时期的“自由、平等、博爱”理念,或20世纪60年代美国的民权运动一样。它们往往代表着希望和抱负,尽管这些希望和抱负永远无法完全实现,但可以通过多种方式去实现。一旦这类思想在任何社会中根深蒂固,它们就会成为推动社会变革的强大力量,朝着人们认为能够实现的方向发展。宗教体现了人们对善恶的理解,往往是社会变革的重要力量。例如,正如我们之前所说,宗教团体在民权运动中发挥了重要作用,21 世纪初,一些福音派基督教会在堕胎和外交政策等各种问题上向政府施加压力。

Ideas and Ideologies Social change may also be initiated by new ideas. Relatively simple, practical ideas may result in inventions that soon are accepted and become a recognized part of the cultural pattern—a new type of dance, a new kind of business corporation, or a new mechanical gadget. However, not all new ideas are of this type. Some represent important changes in social attitudes and basic social values. Such ideas may in time gain a powerful hold on minds, as did the concepts of “liberty, equality, and fraternity” of the French Revolution, or the civil rights movement in the United States in the 1960s. Often they come to represent hopes and aspirations that, though they can never be fully realized, can be approached in a variety of ways. Once ideas of this kind become well established in any society, they become a powerful force for continuing social change in directions that are thought to lead toward their realization. Religions, which embody peoples conception of what is good and what is bad, often are vital forces for social change. For example, as we stated earlier, religious groups played an important role in the civil rights movement, and in the early 2000s some Evangelical Christian churches were exerting pressure on the government on issues as diverse as abortion and foreign policy.

即使在现代世界,重大的新思想通常也需要相当长的时间才能站稳脚跟。许多作家认为,社会变革总是受到上一代伟大思想家的发现或理论的推动。例如,卡尔·马克思在世时对社会影响甚微;英国经济学家约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯在20世纪30年代提出的经济思想直到20世纪60年代才对公众或政府政策产生重大影响。

Even in the modern world, it usually takes considerable time for major new ideas to gain a firm foothold. Various writers have maintained that social change is always motivated by the discoveries or theories of great thinkers of a past generation. Karl Marx, for example, had little effect on society during his lifetime; British economist John Maynard Keynes’s economic ideas of the 1930s did not have any great impact on the public or on government policies until the 1960s.

意识形态是一种有组织的思想体系旨在重塑社会,使其“更贴近内心的渴望”。我们可以将其视为思想、价值观和情感的综合体。信奉某种意识形态的人往往以宗教般的热情支持它。法西斯主义、共产主义、社会主义和民主都是意识形态。每种意识形态都有其价值体系,并且每种意识形态都会按照略有不同的模式来组织社会——据称是为了促进共同利益。没有任何一种意识形态能够实现其拥护者所设想的理想社会。我们认为美国社会是民主的,但我们常常敏锐地意识到,我们在很多方面都未能达到民主的理想。

An ideology is an organized system of ideas for remodeling society to bring it “nearer to the heart’s desire.” We may regard it as a composite of ideas, values, and emotions. Those who believe in an ideology often support it with religious fervor. Fascism, communism, socialism, and democracy are all ideologies. Each has its system of values, and each would organize society—supposedly to further the common good—according to a somewhat different pattern. No ideology ever achieves the ideal society that its adherents envision. We regard our US society as democratic, but we often are keenly aware that we fall short of the democratic ideal in many ways.

意识形态是人们热切信奉的价值体系

Ideologies are systems of values that are fervently held.

集体行动大多数社会变革都是渐进式发生的,并非由某个中央机构策划和执行。然而,有时重要的社会变革却或多或少地由有计划的集体行动迅速促成。整个社会(例如一个现代国家)的集体行动通常意味着政府行动,因为政府是唯一能够制定和执行理论上适用于整个社会群体的规则的机构。

Collective Action Most social changes take place gradually and are not planned and carried out by a central agency At times, however, social changes of importance are brought about more or less rapidly by planned group action. Group action by an entire society, such as a modern nation, usually means government action, because the government is the only agency that can make and enforce rules that in theory apply to the whole social group.

日本是一个在过去150年里经历了巨大社会变革的国家。它从一个封建社会转变为一个高度工业化的现代民主社会。这种变革很大程度上这是由政府为使日本融入现代世界而制定的政策所推动的。

Japan is a nation that has experienced a great social transformation within the past 150 years. It has changed from a feudal society to a modern, highly industrialized democracy. Much of this change has been brought about by government policies that were specifically designed to bring Japan into the modern world.

二十世纪政府大规模推行的剧烈而深远的社会变革的杰出典范,可追溯至前苏联和中国。这两个国家是世界上幅员辽阔、人口最多的国家。共产党领导人上台后,在相对较短的时间内彻底改变了政治、社会和经济结构的许多基本方面。为了建立以卡尔·马克思的共产主义意识形态为基础的社会,国家从中上层阶级所有者手中夺取了巨额财产,将数百万农民从其土地上赶走,让他们到集体农场或公社工作,并接管了几乎所有生产企业的运营和扩张。然而,如此广泛而迅速的变革,只有通过建立强大的独裁政权,才能实现,而这些独裁政权对个人的权利和自由漠不关心。

The outstanding twentieth-century examples of drastic and far-reaching social changes carried out by governments on a vast scale are found in the former Soviet Union and in China. There, in two of the largest and most populous countries of the world, when the communist leaders came into power, they completely changed in a relatively short time many basic aspects of the political, social, and economic structure. In an attempt to create societies based on the communist ideology of Karl Marx, the state seized vast amounts of property from the middleand upper-class owners, uprooted millions of peasants from their holdings and put them to work on collective farms or communes, and took over the operation and expansion of practically all productive enterprises. But the achievement of such broad and rapid changes was possible only through the establishment of powerful dictatorships that had small regard for the rights and freedoms of individuals.

20世纪90年代,许多共产主义独裁政权垮台。东欧经历了剧烈的动荡。一些共产主义政权被推翻;苏联解体为多个国家;所有这些国家都经历了巨大的政治、社会和经济变革。2011年,中东地区经历了剧烈的社会动荡,这场运动被称为“阿拉伯之春”。阿拉伯人民起义反抗数十年来一直忍受的强势独裁统治,要求建立新的政府。结果与大多数人的期望大相径庭。一些国家爆发战争,另一些国家则恢复了专制政权。只有“阿拉伯之春”运动的发源地突尼斯在动乱之后成功实现了民主转型。但即使是突尼斯,也依然在动荡中挣扎。到2022年,该地区依然一片混乱,动荡不安。

In the 1990s, many of these communist dictatorships ended. Eastern Europe went through dramatic upheavals. Several communist systems were overthrown; the Soviet Union broke up into various countries; and all of these countries experienced enormous political, social, and economic change. In 2011, it was the Middle East that went through violent social upheavals in what became known as the Arab Spring. People revolted against strong dictatorships, which the Arab people had accepted for decades, and demanded new forms of government. The result was quite different than the result most people hoped for. War broke out in some countries and others returned to repressive governmental regimes. Only Tunisia, the origin of the Arab Spring movement, successfully transitioned to a democracy in the wake of the unrest. But even it struggled with instability. Through 2022 the region remained chaotic and volatile.

在民主国家,重要的社会变革也能通过有计划的政府行动实现,但前提是这些行动必须得到民众的支持。然而,与对新闻媒体进行严格控制的独裁政权相比,这类变革的实施速度更慢,力度也更小。

Important social changes can also be brought about in democratic countries through planned government action, but only if the action has popular support. However, such changes are implemented more slowly and are much less drastic than those that can be made by a dictatorship that has strong control over the press.

然而,即使是独裁政权也必须得到民众的支持,正如“阿拉伯之春”所表明的那样。为了有效地推动民主国家的社会变革,政府行动要么必须反映民众既定的信念,要么必须相对较快地改变这些信念。如果立法侵犯了大多数公民认为的自身正当权利和特权,那么它就很难成功。例如,美国宪法中于1919年至1932年合法生效的禁酒令修正案最终失败并被废除,因为大多数美国人认为禁止酒类销售是对其个人自由的不合理侵犯。

Even dictatorships must, however, have some support from the people, as was demonstrated by the Arab Spring. To be effective in promoting social change in a democracy, government action must either reflect the established beliefs of the people or change those beliefs relatively quickly. If legislation violates what the majority of citizens believe to be their just rights and privileges, it has little chance of success. For instance, the Prohibition amendment to the US Constitution, legally in force from 1919 to 1932, failed and was finally repealed because the majority of Americans felt that outlawing the sale of liquor was an unreasonable violation of their personal liberties.

科技正在改变人们的组织方式,从而影响社会变革的本质。例如,2012年,一名社区巡逻志愿者杀害了一名手无寸铁的黑人少年,却没有受到任何犯罪指控。几天之内,数百万人迅速签署了一份请愿书,要求逮捕此人。最终,他被逮捕了。在互联网和社交网络出现之前,如此迅速、自发的运动是不可能的。

Technology is changing the way people organize, and thereby affecting the nature of social change. For example, in 2012, when a neighborhood watch volunteer killed an unarmed black teenager and was not charged with a crime, within days, millions of people quickly signed a petition demanding that the person be arrested. He was. Before the Internet and social networking, such a quick, spontaneous movement would have been impossible.

地理与气候:人们在特定地区长期生活后,会逐渐适应当地的地理和气候条件。例如,一个濒临海洋的社会比内陆社会更容易利用海洋资源——例如鱼类作为食物、贝壳作为珠宝,以及可能因靠近海洋而扩大贸易。自然环境的变化是可能发生的,而且确实会发生。在极端情况下,干旱、地震、重要自然资源的枯竭、气候变化等都可能需要文化发生彻底的调整。

Geography and Climate When people live in a given region over a long period of time, they become adjusted to local conditions of geography and climate. A society, for example, set on the edge of an ocean would be more prone to utilize marine resources—fish for food, shells as jewelry, and perhaps greater trade owing to the oceanic access—than would a landlocked society. Changes in the natural environment can and do occur. In extreme cases, droughts, earthquakes, the exhaustion of important natural resources, changes in climate, and the like may require radical cultural adjustments.

当人们从一个地区迁徙到另一个地区时,地理和气候也是社会变迁的重要因素。移居到美洲、非洲、澳大利亚和新西兰的欧洲殖民者发现,这些地区的气候、地形和自然变化存在诸多差异,尤其是在食物、服饰、住房和谋生方式方面。我们将在第五章更详细地探讨这些问题。

Geography and climate are also important factors in social change when people migrate from one region to another. The European settlers who emigrated to the Americas, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand found many differences of climate, topography, and natural changes, especially in food, clothing, houses, and ways of earning a living. We consider these issues in more detail in Chapter 5.

语言与文化变迁

Language and Cultural Change

社会变革需要很长的时间才能发生,而且往往难以察觉。由于我们对过去的认知并不完美,我们对过去的了解也同样有限且不完善。我们不知道过去是什么,我们只知道现在是什么。了解变革发生的方式之一是思考语言的进化是关键。一些社会科学家认为,所有现代语言都源于一个共同的根源——大约两万年前,生活在非洲或亚洲的一小部分人使用着这种语言。

Social change takes place over long periods of time and often is difficult to discern. Because our perceptions of the past are imperfect, our knowledge of the past is also limited and imperfect. We don’t know what was; we only know what is. One way to get an idea of the change that takes place is to consider the evolution of languages. Some social scientists believe that all modern languages sprang from a single root—spoken by a tiny population that probably lived in Africa or Asia about 20,000 years ago.

我们可以通过比较《贝奥武甫》(公元 8 世纪)等书中的古英语短语“Hal! Geard weallas!”(读起来像外语)和莎士比亚(公元 16-17 世纪)中的同一句话:“How art thou?” 以及现代变体:“How ya doin'?” 来了解一种语言能够演变到何种程度。鉴于语言可以在我们不知不觉中发生如此大的变化,我们不应该对文化的变化以及文化之间的差异感到惊讶。

How much a language can evolve can be seen by comparing the Old English phrase for “How are you?” in a book like Beowulf (eighth century AD): “Hal! Geard weallas!” (it reads like a foreign language) to that same phrase in Shakespeare (sixteenth-seventeenth century ad): “How art thou?” to a modern variant: “How ya doin’?” Given how much languages can change without our noticing, we should not be surprised by how much cultures can change and how different cultures can be from one another.

稳定文化的因素

Factors Stabilizing Culture

社会变迁的诸多因素共同造就了一个充满活力、持续变革的社会。变革与文化常常发生冲突,文化对社会变革构成了强大的阻力。在当今的美国,在我们文化中不断发生的诸多变化背后,隐藏着大量稳定因素,它们保障着我们生活方式的连续性。

The various factors of social change lead to a dynamic, continually altering society. Change and culture will often conflict, with culture providing strong resistance to social change. In the present-day United States, underlying the many changes constantly taking place in our culture is a great body of stabilizing elements that give continuity to our way of life.

社会规范的稳定性尽管一些工业社会高度重视所谓的进步,但人类似乎基本上是保守的。人类的思想和性格是如此构成,一旦人们形成了某些信念、态度和行为模式,就很难改变它们。这对于我们在幼儿时期易受影响的岁月中无意识地习得的文化基本要素尤其如此。我们的信念和态度可能包含对变化的某种认可——例如时尚的变化——但这种认可仅限于一定范围内。社会习俗、主要制度,甚至许多惯例都深深地印在我们心中,成为我们自身人格的重要组成部分。例如,女性需要受到保护,免受商业竞争的残酷现实、军旅生活的喧嚣和繁重体力劳动的困扰,这一传统在20世纪70年代美国宪法平等权利修正案未能通过的过程中发挥了一定作用。

Stability of Social Norms In spite of the high value that some industrial societies place on so-called progress, human beings appear basically conservative. The human mind and personality are so constituted that once people acquire certain beliefs, attitudes, and patterns of behavior, they have difficulty changing them. This is especially true of the basic elements in our culture that we acquire unconsciously in the impressionable years of early childhood. Our beliefs and attitudes may include some approval of change—for example, changes in fashions—but only within limits. The mores, the principal institutions of our society, and even many of its conventions are so firmly impressed on us that they become an essential part of our own personalities. For example, the tradition that women need to be protected from the harsh realities of commercial competition, the rough and tumble of military life, and the demands of heavy physical labor played a role in the failure of the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution in the 1970s.

习惯习俗、道德和社会制度之所以能够经久不衰,一个主要原因是它们在很大程度上会成为社会群体所有成员的习惯。习惯是指人们习得的行为方式,这些方式无需刻意注意就能保持下去。然而,一旦养成,它们就很难改变,因为它们会成为个人性格的一部分。

Habit A chief reason for the persistence of conventions, mores, and social institutions is that they become largely habitual for all members of the social group. Habits are ways of behaving that have been learned so well that they can be carried on without conscious attention. Once acquired, however, they are difficult to change because they become a part of the individual’s personality.

价值观依恋习俗、道德和制度之所以能够持续存在,另一个原因是我们和我们的群体赋予它们价值。就习俗而言,这些价值可能微不足道,但就道德和某些基本制度而言,它们却意义非凡。当我们相信既定的行为模式具有崇高的道德价值,并且能够在我们心中激起强烈的情感时,这些模式就会变得难以改变。

Value Attachment Another reason for the persistence of conventions, mores, and institutions is that we and our group attach values to them. In the case of conventions, these values may be small, but in the case of mores and certain basic institutions they are great. When we believe that established patterns of behavior have high moral value and when, in addition, they arouse in us strong emotions, these patterns become resistant to change.

任何重要的社会变革,即使受到大多数人的青睐,也可能遭到许多拥有既得利益的个人和团体的反对。既得利益是指个人因现状(即现有事态)而享有的特权或优势。熟练的泥水匠在泥水行业拥有既得利益,不太可能支持用墙板代替灰泥。建筑行业的各工会为了保护其成员的工作,一直在反对预制房屋,并坚持保留速度更慢、成本更高的现场建造方法。

Social changes of any importance, even though favored by the majority, are likely to meet opposition from many individuals and groups who have vested interests. A vested interest is a privilege or advantage that an individual enjoys because of the status quo, which is the existing state of affairs. A skilled plasterer has a vested interest in the plastering trade, and is not likely to favor substituting wallboard for plaster. Various unions in the building industry, in order to protect the jobs of their members, have fought against prefabricated housing and have insisted on retention of slower, more expensive, on-the-spot building methods.

出于自私的原因,反对将新元素引入我们文化的并非只有工业和劳动。现状的改变不仅会给许多人带来物质上的损失,还会让他们在权力和声望上遭受损失。神学家、哲学家和科学家一再反对新思想和新知识,因为他们担心自己既定的信仰和理论会受到质疑。

Industry and labor are not alone in opposing, for selfish reasons, the introduction of new elements into our culture. Many people stand to lose by changes in the status quo, not only materially but also in power or prestige. Theologians, philosophers, and scientists have again and again opposed new ideas and new knowledge for fear that their own established beliefs and theories would be discredited.

社会变革与社会稳定

Social Change Versus Social Stability

我们现代社会珍视的许多事物——例如我们相对较高的生活水平——如果没有对社会变革持开放态度就不可能实现,因为所有变革都会产生新的情况。然而,如果变革发生得太快,可能会带来我们意想不到的新问题。它非但不会带来一个更美好的世界,反而会带来周期性的危机,给人们带来持续的不确定性和不安全感。每个社会群体都感到需要一定程度的稳定。如果要维持这种稳定,我们基本制度的变革必须是渐进的。它必须通过演变而不是革命来实现。对于任何一个大型现代社会来说,要满足其人民的需求,都需要一个非常复杂的组织;这个组织可以被挑战,可以被调整,可以被改变,但任何认为它可以被摧毁并迅速被更好的组织取代的想法都是不现实的。社会革命永远不会完成,它们带来的结果也很少,比如经过多年的斗争和混乱之后,俄国的共产主义革命产生了斯大林;德国的国家社会主义革命产生了希特勒。

Many of the things we value in our modern society—for example, our relatively high standards of living—could not have been brought about without a receptive attitude toward social change, because all change produces new situations. However, if change occurs rapidly, it may create new problems for which we are unprepared. Instead of introducing a better world, it can bring on periodic crises and give people a constant sense of uncertainty and insecurity Every social group feels the need for some degree of stability. If this stability is to be maintained, change in our basic institutions must be gradual. It must take place by evolution rather than by revolution. For any large modern society to meet the needs of its people requires a remarkably complex organization; the organization can be challenged, it can be adapted, it can be changed, but any belief that it can be destroyed and quickly replaced with something better is unrealistic. Social revolutions are never complete, and they bring few of the results that were envisioned. The communist revolution in Russia, after years of struggle and confusion, produced Stalin; and the National Socialist revolution in Germany produced Hitler.

社会变革与社会问题

Social Change and Social Problems

尽管并非所有社会科学家都对社会问题的确切性质达成共识,但就我们的目的而言,以下定义已足够。社会问题的存在必须满足两个条件。首先,必须广泛认识到某些情况会对相当多的人的福祉产生不利影响。其次,必须相信这种情况能够而且应该得到改变。换句话说,社会问题指已被确认会对大量人的福祉产生不利影响,并且人们相信存在解决方案的情况。承认社会问题的存在显然意味着改变的可能性,因为无论情况多么令人不快,除非我们相信有办法改变它,否则它就不是问题。在原始社会,干旱、饥荒和瘟疫可能不被视为问题,因为它们无能为力。它们只是被接受而已。然而,如果人们相信有办法避免它们——例如,通过向神灵献上足够的祭品——它们就会变成问题。

Although not all social scientists would agree on the exact nature of a social problem, for our purposes the following definition suffices. For a social problem to exist, two conditions must be fulfilled. First, there must be wide recognition of some condition that adversely affects the welfare of a significant number of people. Second, there must be a belief that this condition can and should be changed. In other words, a social problem is a situation that has been recognized as adversely affecting the welfare of large numbers of people and for which it is believed a solution exists. To admit the existence of a social problem clearly implies the possibility of change, for no matter how undesirable a situation may be, it is not a problem unless we believe there is a way to change it. In primitive societies, drought, famine, and pestilence may not have been regarded as problems because nothing could be done about them. They were simply accepted. However, they became problems if it was believed there were ways to avert them— for instance, by making adequate sacrifices to the gods.

从某种意义上说,社会问题始终是个体问题,因为承受其负面影响的往往是个体。我们称之为社会问题有两个原因:首先,它们影响到相当大比例的人群,以至于对整个群体的福祉或安全构成威胁;其次,它们无法单靠个体的力量充分应对。如果要彻底解决这些问题,就必须采取某种形式的群体行动。当我们思考诸如普遍贫困、疾病、反复出现的大规模失业、犯罪、家庭解体以及战争等重大社会问题时,这一点就变得清晰起来。

In a sense, social problems are always individual problems, for it is individuals who experience their adverse effects. We call them social problems for two reasons: first, because they affect such a significant proportion of people as to constitute a threat to the welfare or safety of the whole group; and second, because they cannot be adequately met by individuals. If they are to be solved at all, it must be by some kind of group action. This becomes clear when we consider such major social problems as widespread poverty, disease, recurrent periods of mass unemployment, crime, family disorganization, and war.

正如所料,大型现代社会比小型社会更容易出现复杂的社会问题。大型社会通常包含具有不同文化模式的重要子群体,这些子群体容易受到不一致、紧张和冲突的影响,从而加速社会变革,并往往因此而加剧。

As would be expected, a large modern society is much more likely to possess complex social problems than a smaller society Larger societies often contain important subgroups with differing cultural patterns, and these subgroups are likely to be subject to inconsistencies, strains, and conflicts that speed up social change and often are intensified by it.

当我们试图定义和研究任何特定的社会问题时,都会遇到一些困难。首先,每个社会问题都与许多其他社会问题密切相关,因此极其复杂。要充分理解一个问题,我们必须了解其他问题。例如,要充分理解家庭解体和离婚问题,我们可能需要了解一些关于住房条件差、失业和社会阶层的信息。

When we attempt to define and study any particular social problem, we encounter certain difficulties. For one thing, every social problem is closely related to a number of other social problems and is therefore highly complex. To fully understand one problem, we must know something about the others. Thus, to understand fully the problem of family disorganization and divorce, we may, for example, need to know something about poor housing, unemployment, and social classes.

重大社会问题很少能找到简单或彻底的解决方案。其成因总是错综复杂,切实可行的补救措施也难以找到或实施。此外,解决或缓解社会问题所需的行动可能会因公众的冷漠和无知以及既得利益者的反对而受到阻碍。这并不意味着所有改善社会的努力都徒劳无功。然而,这确实意味着,我们的一些重大社会问题可能会以某种形式或程度持续存在,并持续到无限的未来。

There is seldom any simple or complete solution for a major social problem. The causes are always complex, and practical remedies are difficult to find or implement. Moreover, the action necessary to solve or mitigate a social problem may be effectively blocked by public indifference and ignorance and by the opposition of vested interests. This does not mean that all attempts at social improvement are useless. It does mean, however, that a number of our major social problems are likely to remain with us in some form or degree for the indefinite future.

文化滞后与社会问题

Cultural Lag and Social Problems

尽管文化中的某些元素可能会发生变化,而其他元素则相对保持不变,但特定文化的各个方面绝非完全独立。例如,宗教可能对技术变革产生重大影响。一方面,它可能会通过宣扬物质进步符合神的旨意来促进技术变革;另一方面,它也可能通过宣扬机械创新是魔鬼的杰作来阻碍这种变革。

Though some elements in culture may change while others remain relatively constant, the various aspects of a given culture are by no means entirely independent of one another. To illustrate, religion may have a substantial influence on technological change. On the one hand, it may encourage technological change by teaching that material progress is in accord with the divine will; on the other hand, it may discourage such change by teaching that mechanical innovations are works of the devil.

“这种‘重新使用贬义词’的做法已经太过分了。”

“This ‘reclaiming of pejorative terms has gone too far."

© www.cartoonstock.com

© www.cartoonstock.com

已故杰出社会学家威廉·F·奥格本非常重视他所谓的文化滞后现象,认为它是社会混乱的根源之一。根据他的理论,任何社会的文化都由相互关联的要素组成一个模式。一旦实现了整合和稳定,该模式中任何一个部分的变化都可能给密切相关的部分带来紧张和干扰。最终,人们会进行调整以恢复和谐,但与此同时,可能会出现相当长的一段时间滞后,紧张局势将持续存在。在现代工业社会中,技术变革决定了变革的节奏。根据奥格本的理论,技术进步导致我们文化的物质方面发生快速变化,但非物质方面却未能适应,或者只有在过长的滞后之后才适应。结果,许多棘手的社会问题由此产生。

The late eminent sociologist William F. Ogburn assigned great importance to what he called cultural lag as a source of social disorganization. According to his theory, the culture of any society constitutes a pattern of interrelated elements. Once integration and stability have been achieved, a change in any one part of the pattern may create strains and disturbances in the closely related parts. Eventually, adjustments will be made to restore harmony, but meanwhile there may be a considerable time lag during which tension persists. In modern industrial societies, it is technological change that sets the pace. According to Ogburn’s theory, technological progress produces rapid changes in the material aspects of our culture, but the nonmaterial aspects fail to adjust, or they do so only after an excessive time lag. As a result, many troublesome social problems are created.

文化滞后是指文化不同部分之间变化速度的差异,导致社会不适应。一个经常被提及的文化滞后现象是政治组织未能适应交通运输的进步。举例来说,美国现行的县和县政府体制建立之时,前往县城的唯一交通方式是乘坐马车。由于一天的实际行程限制在二十英里左右,因此规模较大的地方政府单位难以管理。如今,虽然旅行不再受到限制,但现有的地方政府机构几乎没有变化。

Cultural lag is the discrepancy between the rate of change of one part of a culture in relation to another, resulting in a maladjustment within society. A frequently cited cultural lag is the failure of political organizations to adjust to advances in transportation. To illustrate, the present system of counties and county governments in the United States was established when the only way to travel to the county seat was by horse and buggy. Because twenty miles or so was the practical limit of a days travel, larger units of local government would have been difficult to administer. Today there is no such restriction on travel, but there has been little change in existing lines of local government.

文化滞后理论的局限性

Limitations of the Cultural Lag Theory

文化滞后理论很有用,前提是我们清楚地理解其含义及其局限性。首先,我们不能假设文化物质层面的变化总是先于非物​​质层面的变化。两者之间存在着持续的相互作用,从长远来看,技术进步本身在很大程度上取决于某些非物质因素,例如社会态度和社会组织形式。文化的物质产品,即使不是全部,也大多源于人类的思维,如果没有良好的非物质文化氛围,新的物质设备就不会被发明和使用。当今社会快速的物质进步本身就是我们非物质文化早期变革的结果,这些变革使得现代机器技术的发展成为可能。我们已经提请关注其中一些早期的发展。其中之一是文艺复兴、宗教改革和大航海大航海等历史运动所带来的对变革的接受能力的增强。另一个密切相关的因素是思维态度的发展,这使得运用科学方法探索真理成为可能。

The cultural lag theory is useful, provided we clearly understand its meaning and its limitations. In the first place, we must not assume that changes in the material aspects of culture always precede changes in the nonmaterial aspects. There is a constant interaction between the two, and in the long run technological progress itself is largely dependent on certain nonmaterial factors such as social attitudes and forms of social organization. Most, if not all, of the material products of culture originate in the human mind, and new material devices will not be invented and put to use unless the nonmaterial cultural atmosphere is favorable. The rapid material progress characteristic of present-day society is itself the result of earlier changes in our nonmaterial culture, changes that made possible the development of modern machine technology. We have already called attention to some of these earlier developments. One was the increased receptivity to change that was brought about by historical movements such as the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the great voyages of discovery. Another closely related factor was the development of mental attitudes that made it possible to apply the scientific method to the search for truth.

其次,当物质文化发生变化时,我们有时可能难以就非物质文化需要做出哪些调整达成一致。例如,汽车的发明及其作为交通工具的广泛应用。汽车带来了许多社会变革,包括求爱和约会习俗的变化。其影响之一就是使恋爱中的情侣在某种程度上摆脱了长辈的严密监督。这是否代表着我们的非物质文化对汽车的调整并不令人满意?一些观察家认为确实如此。他们认为这是文化滞后的一个例子,并主张必须设计新的方法来监督恋爱中的情侣,以维持道德标准。然而,另一些人则认为,两性关系的更大自由并非问题,而是一种代表社会进步的发展。

In the second place, when changes occur in the material culture we may sometimes have difficulty in agreeing on the kinds of adjustments needed in the nonmaterial culture. Consider, for example, the invention of the automobile and its widespread adoption as a means of transportation. The automobile brought about many social changes, including changes in the customs of courtship and dating. One of its effects was to enable dating couples to escape, to some degree, the close supervision of their elders. Did this represent an unsatisfactory adjustment of our nonmaterial culture to the automobile? Some observers maintained that it did. They considered it an example of cultural lag and argued that new ways of supervising dating couples had to be devised to maintain moral standards. Others, however, regarded greater freedom in the relations between the sexes not as a problem but as a development that represented social progress.

但即使人们普遍认为非物质文化尚未很好地适应物质文化的变化,做出预期的调整也可能十分困难,甚至可能根本不可能。“滞后”一词乐观地暗示,令人满意的解决方案

But even if there is general agreement that the nonmaterial culture has not satisfactorily adjusted to changes in the material culture, making the desired adjustments may be difficult or, conceivably, impossible. The word lag implies optimistically that the satisfactory solution

技术变革引发的社会问题解决只是时间问题,但在某些情况下,这一天可能永远不会到来。例如,我们社会对胎儿流产过程的医学知识的不断增长,只会加剧围绕这一问题的社会冲突。

of social problems resulting from technological change is merely a matter of time, but in some cases this time may never come. Our society’s increased medical knowledge of fetal abortive processes has only added to the social conflict surrounding that issue, for instance.

文化间的对比

Contrasts Among Cultures

文化与社会变革的互动不仅会导致一个社会内部的社会问题,也会导致不同社会之间的问题。原因在于,不同的文化往往沿着截然不同的路径发展。例如,在我们的文化中,即使男女并不总是享有平等的待遇,他们也被视为平等。在某些其他文化中,女性的角色与男性的角色有着根本的不同。(例如,在一些伊斯兰社会中,男性只需说或写“我和你离婚”这句话就可以与妻子离婚。(女性则没有同样的选择。))

The interaction between culture and social change leads not only to social problems within a society but also to problems among various societies. The reason is that different cultures often evolve along quite different paths. For example, in our culture women and men are considered equal, even if they are not always treated that way. In certain other cultures, a womans role is fundamentally different from a man’s role. (For example, in some Islamic societies a man may divorce his wife simply by saying or writing the words: I divorce you. (Women don’t have the same option.))

古代部落社会往往彼此差异巨大,但除非受到强大的外界影响,否则往往相对稳定。工业社会则更容易发生变化。在工业社会中,人们的需求往往会迅速增长,满足这些需求的产品也同​​样如此。在不同文化之间,家庭关系、经济活动、政府、宗教和艺术呈现出千差万别的形态。

Archaic tribal societies often differ from one another greatly, but unless they are brought into contact with powerful outside influences, they tend to be relatively stable. Industrial societies are much more subject to change. In them peoples wants tend to multiply rapidly, as do the products with which to satisfy them. From one culture to another, family relations, economic activities, government, religion, and art take on an endless variety of forms.

人类与社会的互动

The Interaction of Humans and Society

虽然我们每个人在某种程度上都是文化环境的产物,但没有两个人会拥有完全相同的个人经历。此外,他们也不会遗传相同的生理和心理结构,这些遗传差异会导致他们对文化环境中的许多因素做出不同的反应。

Though we are all, in part, products of our cultural environment, no two persons will have exactly the same personal experiences. Furthermore, they will not inherit biologically the same physical and mental constitutions, and these inherited differences will cause them to react differently to many of the elements in their cultural environment.

因此,人类学的研究是一个复杂的过程,它从个体的独特性到社会的普遍性,再回到个体的独特性。因此,这样的研究必须涵盖广泛的问题。

Thus, the study of humankind is a complicated one that moves from unique traits of individuals to general aspects of society and back again to unique aspects of individuals. Therefore, such a study must encompass a wide range of issues.

文化相对主义

Cultural Relativism

文化相对主义主张所有文化在很大程度上都是平等的。也就是说,文化的发展方式最适合其受众的需求,并且文化特质本身也具有特定的目的。因此,我们不能在不考虑其完整历史的情况下,就断言一种文化优于另一种文化。

The doctrine of cultural relativism asserts that all cultures are for the most part equally valid. That is, cultures develop in a way that best suits the population’s needs, and the cultural traits within a culture have a specific purpose. Thus, we can’t say that one culture is better than another without taking into account its full history.

如今,很少有社会学者会质疑这样的观点:任何能够满足群体基本需求并长期生存的文化都值得尊重,那些践行其习俗并遵循其道德准则的个人也同样值得尊重。文化本身无所谓好坏对错;它们只是存在,必须根据其自身的价值体系来评判。因此,要理解其他文化,我们必须尝试通过在其影响下成长起来的人的视角,而不是我们自己的视角来看待它们。如果我们这样做,或许会发现这些文化满足了我们未能意识到的需求。例如,19世纪前往南太平洋某些岛屿的传教士们惊讶地发现,当地妇女腰部以上不穿衣服。他们的使命之一是让当地妇女改穿“哈伯德妈妈”(Mother Hubbards)——一种不修身的连衣裙,可以很好地遮盖身体。对传教士来说,这似乎是一个巨大的收获。但从健康的角度来看,这或许并非好事。在岛屿的热带雨季气候下,哈伯德妈妈们大部分时间都处于潮湿状态,这可能导致她们的健康状况不佳。

Today, few students of society would question the proposition that any culture that has enabled a group to meet its basic needs, and to survive over a long period of time, is worthy of respect, as are the individuals who practice its customs and follow its moral precepts. Cultures are not as a whole good, bad, right, or wrong; they simply exist and must be judged relative to their own value system. Therefore, to understand other cultures, we must try to look at them through the eyes of those who have been brought up under their influence rather than through our own eyes. If we do this, we may find that these cultures meet needs we have failed to recognize. For example, nineteenth-century missionaries to certain South Sea islands were shocked to find that the native women wore no clothing above the waist. Part of their mission was to convert the women to wearing Mother Hubbards, shapeless dresses that kept their bodies well covered. To the missionaries, this seemed a great gain. But from a health standpoint, it may have been unfortunate. In the tropical rainy climate of the islands, the Mother Hubbards were wet much of the time, and they may have contributed to poor health.

世界文化区域

Cultural regions of the world.

民族中心主义是指倾向于用自身文化及其标准来评判其他文化,并认为自己的民族及其生活方式优于其他所有民族。二十世纪的一个极端例子是纳粹宣称日耳曼人是超级种族的理论。在现代社会,民族中心主义和沙文主义情绪在动荡时期或经济萧条时期会加剧。纳粹之前的德国正处于严重的经济衰退之中,许多人认为这导致了阿道夫·希特勒的上台。在二十世纪后期,我们看到,或者被迫认识到,宗教作为一种分裂力量的力量。在北爱尔兰、尼日利亚、巴基斯坦和前南斯拉夫等国家,对立的宗教团体在国内激烈争斗,而他们的内部分歧有时会影响他们与外国的关系,因为他们有时会试图影响信仰。在其他国家。这些宗教信仰常常与政治问题混合在一起,使得文化问题变得复杂而棘手。

Ethnocentrism is the tendency to judge other cultures by one’s own culture and its standards, and the belief that one’s own people and their way of life are superior to all others. An extreme example in the twentieth century was the Nazi doctrine that the Germans were a super race. In modern societies, feelings of ethnocentrism and chauvinism increase during times of insecurity or economic depression. Pre-Nazi Germany was in a severe depression, which many believe enabled Adolf Hitler to rise to power. In the late twentieth century, we saw, or were forced to recognize, the power of religion as a divisive force. In countries such as Northern Ireland, Nigeria, Pakistan, and the former Yugoslavia, opposing religious groups have fought bitterly with each other within their own borders, and their internal differences can affect their relations with foreign countries as they sometimes attempt to influence beliefs in other nations. Frequently, these religious convictions are mixed with political problems, making the cultural issues complex and recalcitrant.

民族中心主义曾一度对一些无文字的部落社会具有生存价值,因为它赋予他们自信,让他们相信自己民族和生活方式的优越性。但如今,尽管民族中心主义仍然有助于社会凝聚力,但生存很可能取决于不同种族、民族和国家之间能否达成理解与合作。虽然某种程度的民族中心主义对于维系社会凝聚力至关重要,但刻意培养民族中心主义通常会导致误解、偏见、怨恨和冲突。

At one time, ethnocentrism may have had a survival value for some nonliterate tribal societies by giving them confidence in the superiority of their own people and own way of life. But nowadays, although ethnocentrism still contributes to the cohesion of a society, survival is likely to depend on achieving understanding and cooperation among races, peoples, and nations. Although some ethnocentrism is necessary to hold a society together, the conscious cultivation of ethnocentrism generally results in misunderstanding, prejudice, ill feeling, and conflict.

社会研究方法

Approach to the Study of Society

本书主要关注现代美国社会的本质。因此,大部分讨论都集中在我们自身的文化及其基本价值观,以及在努力实现这些价值观的过程中所出现的问题上。然而,如果我们从更宏观的角度看待自身社会,就能更好地理解它。因此,本书通篇都强调其他社会和文化,关注所有文化的共同特征,以及它们之间的差异。

In this book we are primarily concerned with the nature of modern US society. Most of the discussion is therefore centered on our own culture and its basic values and on the problems that arise in connection with efforts to achieve these values. However, we can understand our own society better if we see it in perspective. Hence, throughout the book we call attention to other societies and cultures, to the characteristics common to all cultures, and to the differences that distinguish them.

由于科学的职能并非确定社会价值观,我们在很大程度上只是假设我们自身民主社会的基本理想是有效的,偶尔也会尝试阐明这些理想。但我们的主要努力在于描绘美国社会的总体特征。我们解释其价值观和社会制度。我们也讨论其未能实现目标的原因以及有时由此产生的挫折和冲突,思考其主要问题的性质,并探索通过社会行动解决这些问题的可能性。

Because it is not the function of science to determine social values, we simply assume for the most part the validity of the basic ideals of our own democratic society, and occasionally we attempt to clarify these ideals. But our principal efforts are concerned with giving a picture of the general character of US society. We explain its values and its social institutions. We also discuss its failures to achieve its goals and the frustration and conflict that are sometimes the result, and we consider the nature of its major problems and explore the possibilities of solving them through social action.

学习回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 文化将社会凝聚在一起。
  • Culture holds society together.
  • 文化的重要元素包括社会规范、社会制度、物质产品、语言和社会价值观。
  • Important elements of culture include social norms, social institutions, material products, language, and social values.
  • 三种流行的文化变迁理论包括“美好旧时光”理论、“世界正在变得更好”理论和“变化循环”理论。
  • Three popular theories of cultural change include the “good-old days” theory, “the world is getting better” theory, and the “change runs in cycles” theory.
  • 导致文化变迁的五个因素是技术、文化传播、思想和意识形态、集体行动以及地理和气候。
  • Five factors that cause culture to change are technology, cultural diffusion, ideas and ideologies, collective action, and geography and climate.
  • 稳定文化的三个因素是社会规范、习惯和价值依附的稳定性。
  • Three factors stabilizing culture are stability of social norms, habit, and value attachment.
  • 文化滞后理论认为,文化中任何一个部分的变化都可能给密切相关的部分带来压力和干扰。
  • The cultural lag theory states that a change in any one part of culture may create strains and disturbances in the closely related parts.
  • 文化相对主义学说认为,所有文化在很大程度上都是同样有效的。
  • The doctrine of cultural relativism states that all cultures are for the most part equally valid.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 公约 (64)
  • conventions (64)
  • 文化替代品 (66)
  • cultural alternatives (66)
  • 文化传播(69)
  • cultural diffusion (69)
  • 文化进化(62)
  • cultural evolution (62)
  • 文化融合(67)
  • cultural integration (67)
  • 文化滞后(74)
  • cultural lag (74)
  • 文化物品(文物)(65)
  • cultural objects (artifacts) (65)
  • 文化相对主义(76)
  • cultural relativism (76)
  • 文化普遍性 (66)
  • cultural universal (66)
  • 文化 (61)
  • culture (61)
  • 发现(69)
  • discovery (69)
  • 民族中心主义(76)
  • ethnocentrism (76)
  • 习惯(72)
  • habits (72)
  • 意识形态(64)
  • ideology (64)
  • 互联网 (68)
  • Internet (68)
  • 发明 (69)
  • invention (69)
  • 语言 (65)
  • language (65)
  • 法律(65)
  • laws (65)
  • 习俗 (64)
  • mores (64)
  • 多元文化主义(62)
  • multiculturalism (62)
  • 多元化(62)
  • pluralism (62)
  • 社会进化(68)
  • social evolution (68)
  • 社会机构 (65)
  • social institution (65)
  • 社交(62)
  • socialization (62)
  • 社会问题(73)
  • social problem (73)
  • 社会价值观(65)
  • social values (65)
  • 社会 (63)
  • society (63)
  • 既得利益(72)
  • vested interest (72)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 文中对文化的定义是什么?
  2. What is the definition of culture given in the text?
  3. 什么是文化进化?
  4. What is cultural evolution?
  5. 作者是否认为单一文化主义和多元文化主义是对立的?为什么?
  6. Do the authors see monoculturalism and multiculturalism as opposites? Why or why not?
  7. 美国社会有哪些习俗、习俗和法律?
  8. What are some examples of conventions, mores, and laws found in US society?
  9. 什么是社会制度?
  10. What are social institutions?
  11. 什么是社会价值观?请举例说明。你认为美国人会接受杀婴作为一种积极的社会价值观吗?为什么?
  12. What are social values? Give some examples. Do you think Americans could ever accept infanticide as a positive social value? Why or why not?
  13. 为什么原始社会的文化比现代工业社会的文化更加融合?
  14. Why are the cultures of primitive societies more integrated than the cultures of modern industrial societies?
  15. 解释文化与社会的关系。
  16. Explain the relationship between culture and society.
  17. 你认为过去五六个世纪中哪些发展对加速社会变革至关重要?请分别解释原因。
  18. What developments of the last five or six centuries do you think have been of greatest importance in speeding up the rate of social change? Explain why in each case.
  19. 区分社会进化和社会变迁的概念。
  20. Distinguish between the concepts of social evolu tion and social change.
  21. 互联网如何改变文化传播的方式?
  22. How is the Internet changing the way cultural diffusion takes place?
  23. 为什么社会变革通常会遭遇强烈抵制?这是幸运还是不幸?请解释。
  24. Why does social change usually encounter strong resistance? Is this fortunate or unfortunate? Explain.
  25. 什么是社会问题?为什么某个社会问题往往难以定义或孤立?
  26. What is a social problem? Why is a particular social problem often difficult to define or isolate?
  27. 阐述文化滞后理论并讨论其局限性。
  28. State the theory of cultural lag and discuss its limitations.
  29. 什么是文化相对主义?这个概念与民族中心主义有何关联?
  30. What is cultural relativism? How does this concept relate to ethnocentrism?
  31. 当今的主要社会问题中,你认为哪三个最为关键?捍卫你的选择。
  32. Of today’s major social problems, which three seem to you most critical? Defend your choices.
  33. 有时我们对社会制度的某些方面感到不满。因此,我们是否应该彻底废除它,重新开始?为什么?
  34. Sometimes we are dissatisfied with aspects of our social system. Should we therefore dismantle it completely and start over? Why or why not?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. www.toolpack.com/culture.html网站探讨了组织(业务)层面的文化变革。什么是组织文化?列举四家成功文化案例。
  2. The site www.toolpack.com/culture.html discusses cultural change at the organizational (business) level. What is organizational culture? Name the four companies used as examples of successful cultures.
  3. 浏览美国高尔夫球协会 (USGA) 的网站www.usga.org/。USGA 是一个社会机构吗?高尔夫球手们组成了一个社团吗?
  4. Look through the website for the United States Golf Association www.usga.org/. Is the USGA a social institution? Do golfers comprise a society?
  5. 请访问www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOe-xl-aUP2o并观看关于印第安寄宿学校的视频。英美文化与纳瓦霍原住民文化的互动产生了什么结果?本章中哪个术语最能体现内战时期威廉·谢尔曼将军的观点?普拉特将军的“杀死印第安人,拯救人类”的言论如何体现在美国政府关于纳瓦霍原住民儿童教育的行动中?
  6. Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOe-xl-aUP2o and the video about Indian boarding schools. What resulted from the interaction of Anglo-American and Native Navajo cultures? What term from this chapter best illustrates the views of Civil War general William Sherman and How was General Pratt’s comment, “Kill the Indian, save the man” reflected in the actions of the US government concerning the education of Native Navajo children?
  7. 访问www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/french-phrases.html,阅读一些在英语中常用的法语短语。你认为这是文化传播的一个例子吗?请给出你自己的文化传播例子。
  8. Go to www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/french-phrases.html and read some of the French phrases that have become commonly used in English. Do you think this is an example of cultural diffusion? Give your own example of cultural diffusion.
  9. 请访问www.irespect.net/Untold%20Stories/Chinese/Chinese%20Values.htm阅读关于中国社会价值观的文章。谁的教义对这些价值观影响最大?中美文化中是否存在共同的价值观?
  10. Read the article at www.irespect.net/Untold%20Stories/Chinese/Chinese%20Values.htm on Chinese social values. Whose teachings largely influence these values? Are there values that Chinese and American cultures share?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 布鲁姆,保罗,《反对同理心:理性同情的案例》,纽约:哈珀柯林斯,2016 年。
  • Bloom, Paul, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, New York: Harper Collins, 2016.
  • 布朗森·波和阿什利·梅里曼,《养育冲击:关于儿童的新思维》,纽约:中央大出版社,2009 年。
  • Bronson, Po, and Ashley Merryman, Nurture Shock: New Tltinking about Children, New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2009.
  • 格兰特,亚当,《再次思考:知道自己不知道的事情的力量》,纽约:维京出版社,2021 年。
  • Grant, Adam, Tltink Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, New York: Viking Publishers, 2021.
  • Henig,Robin Marantz,《潘多拉的宝宝:第一批试管婴儿如何引发生殖革命》,纽约:霍顿·米夫林,2004 年。
  • Henig, Robin Marantz, Pandora’s Baby: How the First TestTube Babies Sparked the Reproductive Revolution, New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
  • 霍夫曼,安德鲁 J.,《文化如何影响气候变化辩论》,斯坦福,加利福尼亚州:斯坦福简报,2015 年。
  • Hoffman, Andrew J., How Culture Shapes the Climate Change Debate, Stanford, CA: Stanford Briefs, 2015.
  • 米德,玛格丽特,《文化进化的连续性》,康涅狄格州纽黑文:耶鲁大学出版社,1964 年。
  • Mead, Margaret, Continuities in Cultural Evolution, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964.
  • 凯文·奥基夫,《普通美国人:对美国最普通公民的非凡探索》,纽约:公共事务出版社,2005 年。
  • O’Keefe, Kevin, The Average American: The Extraordinary Search for the Nation’s Most Ordinary Citizen, New York: Public Affairs, 2005.
  • 萨波斯基,罗伯特,《行为:人类最好和最坏时的生物学》,纽约:企鹅出版社,2017 年。
  • Sapolsky, Robert, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, New York: Penguin Press, 2017.
  • 斯卡利亚,莫琳,《斯卡利亚演讲:关于法律、信仰和美好生活的思考》,纽约:企鹅出版社,2017 年。
  • Scalia, Maureen, Scalia Speaks: Reflections on Law, Faith, and Life Well Lived, New York: Penguin Publishers, 2017.
  • 埃里克·施洛瑟,《快餐帝国》,纽约:Perennial/Harper Collins,2004 年。
  • Schlosser, Eric, Fast Food Nation, New York: Perennial/Harper Collins, 2004.
  • 施瓦茨,霍华德·S.,《政治正确性与社会秩序的破坏:记录原始自我的崛起》,巴塞尔:帕尔格雷夫·麦克米伦出版社,2016 年。
  • Schwartz, Howard S., Political Correctness and the Destruction of Social Order: Chronicling the Rise of the Pristine Self, Basel: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
  • Shweder,Richard,《男人为什么烧烤?文化多样性食谱》,马萨诸塞州剑桥:哈佛大学出版社,2003年。
  • Shweder, Richard, Why Do Men Barbecue? Recipes for Cultural Diversity, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003.
  • 杰伊·温斯坦 (Jay Weinstein),《社会变革》,马里兰州兰纳姆:Rowman & Littlefield,2010 年。
  • Weinstein, Jay, Social Change, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010.
  • Zeigler,Alexis,《有意识的文化进化:理解我们的过去,选择我们的未来》,弗吉尼亚州夏洛茨维尔:Ecodem Press,2000 年。
  • Zeigler, Alexis, Conscious Cultural Evolution: Understanding Our Past, Choosing Our Future, Charlottesville, VA: Ecodem Press, 2000.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第五地理、人口、生态和社会

chapter 5Geography, Demography, Ecology, and Society

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-5

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-5

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 在世界地图上识别主要国家
  • Identify the major countries on a map of the world
  • 解释为什么许多人认为人口增长是一个问题
  • Explain why many people believe population growth is a problem
  • 阐述马尔萨斯理论并解释技术如何影响其预测
  • State the Malthusian theory and explain how technology can affect its predictions
  • 解释文化和环境如何相互作用
  • Explain how culture and environment interact
  • 解释地理、人口、文化和自然环境如何相互作用并影响生态平衡
  • Explain how geography, population, culture, and the natural environment interact—and affect the ecological balance

在上一章中,我们讨论了文化,它是维系社会凝聚力的粘合剂。在本章中,我们将从三个略有不同的视角——地理、人口和生态——来审视社会,并分别探讨其与文化的相互关系。每个视角都凸显了社会面临的特定问题,并为更好地理解这些问题奠定了基础。

In the last chapter, we discussed culture, the glue that holds society together. In this chapter, we look at society from three slightly different perspectives—geographic, demographic, and ecological—discussing each in terms of its interrelationships with culture. Each of these perspectives highlights certain problems that societies face and provides a foundation for a better understanding of those problems.

地理

Geography

几年前,国家地理学会委托开展了一项名为“地理:国际盖洛普调查”的研究。该研究测试了九个国家的10820人,考察他们在世界地图上识别十六个地点的能力。美国公民能够识别大约一半的地点,但18至24岁的公民只能识别不到七个。瑞典人表现最佳。这种情况至今仍未改变;作为后续研究,国家地理-罗珀公司对年轻人进行了一项地理素养调查,发现只有37%的人能在地图上找到伊拉克,不到一半的美国人能识别法国或日本;只有一半的人能找到纽约州。该调查还考察了世界文化、经济和自然资源。美国公民最不可能知道塔利班的基地位于阿富汗,超过三分之一的人估计美国人口是实际人口的十倍。

A number of years ago the National Geographic Society commissioned a study called “Geography: An International Gallup Survey.” It tested 10,820 people in nine countries on their ability to identify sixteen spots on a map of the world. Citizens of the United States could identify about half the places, but citizens aged eighteen to twenty-four could identify fewer than seven. People in Sweden did the best. The situation hadn’t changed; as a follow-up, National Geographic-Roper conducted a survey on geographic literacy among young adults and found that only 37 percent could find Iraq on a map, and less than half of US citizens could identify France or Japan; just one-half could find the state of New York. The survey also looked at the worlds cultural, economic, and natural resources. US citizens were least likely to know that the Taliban was based in Afghanistan, and more than one-third estimated the population of the United States to be ten times the actual number.

这里有一张世界地图。为了方便测试,我们只要求你指出13个国家(不包括《国家地理》提到的另外三个国家)。我们要求你指出的国家都已编号。希望你和瑞典人一样聪明(他们的得分约为75%)。

Here, you’ll find a map of the world. To keep our quiz easy, we are asking you to identify only thirteen countries (leaving out the other three spots the National Geographic asked about). The countries we ask you to name are numbered. Let’s hope you’re as smart as the Swedes (who scored about 75 percent).

地理测验你能说出地图上编号的国家/地区的名称吗?注意——国家/地区有时会突然更名。在过去的二十年里,缅甸更名为缅甸,柬埔寨更名为柬埔寨,扎伊尔更名为刚果民主共和国(在被称为“扎伊尔”之前,它的名字是“刚果”)。我们的测验答案如下(它们是上下颠倒的)。1 . 美国;2. 加拿大;3. 英国;4. 俄罗斯;5. 法国;6. 日本;7. 意大利;8. 埃及;9. 瑞典;10. 墨西哥;11. 南非;12. 德国;13. 越南

A geography quiz. Can you name the countries numbered on this map? Be careful—countries sometimes change their names suddenly. Within the past twenty years, Burma renamed itself Myanmar, Kampuchea changed its name back to Cambodia, and Zaire changed its name to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (its name before it was called “Zaire” was “The Congo”). The answers to our quiz follow (they’re printed upside down). I. United States; 2. Canada; 3. United Kingdom; 4. Russia; 5. France; 6. Japan; 7. Italy; 8. Egypt; 9. Sweden; 10. Mexico; 11. South Africa; 12. Germany; 13. Vietnam

即使你得了100分,你也不一定懂地理。1地理远不止是知道地方在哪里。地理学是一社会科学,关注人与人之间以及人与自然环境之间的空间互动。地理学思考的问题包括城市为什么位于其所在位置,环境如何塑造社会文化,以及为什么有些地区发展而其他地区却没有。例如,在20世纪交通技术进步之前,中非很少受到西方文化的影响,其中一个解释是,那里的大多数河流航行太困难——乘船沿河而上进入非洲大陆内部既昂贵又困难。

Even if you scored 100 percent, you do not necessarily know geography.1 Geography is far more than the knowledge of where places are. Geography is a social science that focuses on the spatial interaction of human beings with each other and with their physical environment. Geography considers questions such as why cities are located where they are, how the environment shapes society’s culture, and why some areas develop while others don’t. For example, one explanation why central Africa was little touched by Western culture before twentieth-century technological advances in transportation is that most of its rivers are too difficult to navigate—it was just too expensive and difficult to get a boat up the rivers into the interior of the continent.

这些知识在社会科学中处于什么位置?正如我们在第一章所强调的,社会科学之间存在着巨大的重叠。因此,不仅仅是地理学家考虑过城市的区位、环境对文化的影响以及为什么某些地区比其他地区发达。社会学家也考虑过这些问题。事实上,社会学家和一些非地理学家的社会科学家是第一批提出我们在本章中讨论的许多问题的人。当地理学家被问及这个问题时,他们会说社会学家实际上就是地理学家。这种说法似乎有点社会科学的含糊其辞,但了解哪个社会科学提出了某个特定的观点并不比了解该观点本身重要。

Where does such knowledge fit into the social sciences? As we emphasized in Chapter 1, enormous overlap exists among the social sciences. Therefore, it is not only geographers who have considered the location of cities, the effect of environment on culture, and why some areas develop rather than others. Sociologists have considered these issues too. In fact, sociologists and some social scientists other than geographers were the first to raise many of the issues we discuss in this chapter. When geographers are asked about this, they say that sociologists actually are geographers. That claim seems to be a bit of social science equivocation, but it is less important to know which social science has had a particular idea than it is to know the idea itself.

人口统计

Demography

社会由人组成。地理学从空间维度研究社会,而人口统计学则从人的维度研究社会。

Societies are made up of people. Whereas geography approaches the study of society by means of a spatial dimension, demography approaches it through a people dimension.

人口统计学是研究人口数量和特征的学科。它不仅关注一个地区的人口数量,还关注可能影响人口增长的因素。

Demography is the study of the number and characteristics of a population. It is concerned not only with the number of people in an area but also with the factors that may

人口数量的增加或减少取决于多种因素。这些因素包括医疗保健和卫生状况、生育控制的实施程度以及食物和其他资源的供应情况。此外,人口统计学还关注人口在国家和地区之间的分布情况,以及构成特定人口的不同人群,包括他们的生理、心理和文化特征。人口统计学家根据年龄、性别、婚姻状况、职业、收入、国籍和种族等特征对人口进行分类和统计。

be causing their number to increase or decrease. These include matters such as the state of health care and sanitation, the extent to which birth control is practiced, and the availability of food and other resources. Further, demography concerns the distribution of people among countries and regions and the different kinds of people who make up any given population, including their physical, mental, and cultural characteristics. Demographers classify and count people on the basis of characteristics such as age, gender, marital status, occupation, income, nationality, and race.

人口估计

Population Estimates

如果我们把所有国家的人口统计数据加起来,2022年的总人口略多于79亿。人口在各个国家和地区之间的分布并不均衡(见图5.1)。中国是人口最多的国家,超过14亿;亚洲是人口最多的地区,超过40亿。

When we add up the population statistics for all countries, we conclude that there were slightly more than 7.9 billion people in 2022. Population is divided up unevenly among countries and regions (see Figure 5.1). China has the largest population of any country, with more than 1.4 billion people; and Asia, with more than four billion people, has the largest population of any region.

人口增长的决定因素

Determinants of Population Growth

由于任何国家人口的两个关键决定因素是死亡率和出生率,因此值得特别考虑。图5.2显示了自1960年以来美国的出生率和死亡率。

Because two key determinants of the population of any country are its death rate and its birthrate, these deserve special consideration. Figure 5.2 shows the US birthrates and death rates since 1960.

当前世界死亡率低于遥远的过去。虽然由于新冠疫情,死亡率的下降速度有所放缓,但未来几年死亡率还能下降多少,将取决于世界人口年龄结构的变化以及医学科学的进步速度。虽然可以预测死亡率会进一步下降,但除非我们在控制退行性疾病和老龄化过程本身方面取得重大进展,否则人口增长的未来在很大程度上将取决于出生率的趋势。随着死亡率下降,世界人口将会增加,除非出生率也下降。尽管一些发展中国家努力降低出生率,但由于死亡率下降,其人口已经出现增长。

The current world death rate is lower than in the distant past. While its fall has slowed due to the Corona pandemic, how much further the death rate will drop in coming years will depend both on changes in the age composition of the world population and on the rate of advance in medical science. Although some further reduction in the death rate can be predicted, unless we make great advances in controlling degenerative diseases and the aging process itself, the future of population growth will depend largely on the trend of the birthrate. As death rates decline, the world population will increase unless birthrates also fall. Developing countries have already seen their populations increase because of their declining death rates, despite the efforts of some of them to decrease their birthrates.

在欧洲和美国,出生率自19世纪以来一直在下降,尽管有些国家曾出现周期性的上升。例如,在美国,尽管出生率在20世纪90年代初略有上升,并在2015年左右再次上升,但大多数人口统计学家认为,这只是暂时趋势,由于社会和经济因素使人们越来越不愿意承担养育大家庭所带来的麻烦、费用和责任,出生率的长期下降趋势可能会持续下去。

In Europe and the United States, the birthrate has been declining since the nineteenth century, although upswings have occurred periodically in one country or another. In the United States, for example, although the birthrate rose slightly in the beginning of the 1990s, and again around 2015, most demographers believe these were temporary trends, and the long-term decline of the birthrate will likely continue due to social and economic forces that make people less willing to accept the trouble, expense, and responsibility involved in raising large families.

图5.1世界人口。 (a) 列出了人口最多的二十个国家。(b) 是根据联合国估计的过去和预期世界人口的图表。虽然世界人口仍在增长,但增长率正在下降,预计将在下个世纪的某个时候达到峰值。(来源:联合国 via OurWorldInData.org

Figure 5.1World population.The populations of the twenty largest countries are listed in (a). In (b) is a graph of past and expected world population based on UN estimates. While the world population is still increasing, its rate of increase is decreasing, and it is expected to peak at some point in the next century. (Source: United Nations via OurWorldInData.org)

图5.21960 年至 2020 年美国的出生率和死亡率。来源:世界银行指标 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CDRT.IN? locations=US )

Figure 5.2US birth and death rates, 1960 to 2020. (Source: World Bank Indicators, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CDRT.IN?locations=US)

美国、日本和欧洲的生育控制措施非常有效,以至于这些国家的人口增长速度已放缓至缓慢甚至开始下降。在欠发达国家,儿童在家庭中扮演着重要的经济和社会角色,尽管政府试图减缓人口增长速度,但人口增长速度仍然居高不下。在印度,一项由政府实施的强制绝育计划是导致英迪拉·甘地政府于1977年下台的一个因素。后来,她再次当选,该计划也进行了重大修改。

Birth control has been so effective in the United States, Japan, and Europe that their population growth has slowed to a crawl or even begun to decline. In less developed countries where children play an important economic as well as social role in the family, population growth has continued at a high rate despite governmental attempts to slow it down. In India, a state-run program of forced sterilization was a factor in the fall of the government of Indira Gandhi in 1977. She was later reelected and the program was significantly modified.

直到最近,中国家庭仍然面临着强大的社会和经济压力,要求只生一个孩子。这些压力包括同侪压力(决定生育多个孩子的家庭常常受到社会排斥)、经济压力(决定生育多个孩子的家庭会被罚款并被剥夺某些住房权利,而同意只生一个孩子的家庭则会获得经济奖励)以及辅导(党的领导人会上门拜访并解释了节育的原因和必要性。独生子女政策的效果不如一些人预期,尽管官方施加压力,甚至对生育超过一个孩子的家庭处以高达1000美元的罚款,但许多夫妇还是选择生育更多孩子。2016年,由于面临劳动力规模过小无法养活老龄人口的风险,中国终止了独生子女政策,取而代之的是二胎政策,并于2021年将其改为三胎政策。

Until recently in China, strong social and economic pressures to have only one child were applied to families. These included peer pressure (families deciding to have more than one child often were socially ostracized), economic pressure (families deciding to have more than one child were fined and deprived of certain rights to housing, whereas those agreeing to have only one child were financially rewarded), and counseling (the party leaders visited and explained the reasons and need for birth control). The one-child program was not as effective as some expected, and despite official pressures and even fines of as much as $1,000 for families having more than one child, many couples chose to have more children. In 2016, faced with the possibility of having a workforce too small to support its elderly population, China ended its one-child policy and replaced it with a two-child policy, and in 2021, it replaced it with a three-child policy.

降低出生率最原始的方法或许出现在泰国,那里的计划生育服务机构负责人用避孕套作为自己的名片。在那里,许多人穿着印有“每日一个避孕套,医生远离我”字样的T恤,而不是印有大学名称或口号的T恤。避孕信息被印在瓶盖、毛巾和冰淇淋棒等物品上。

Probably the most original approach to reducing the birthrate existed in Thailand, where the head of the family planning services used a condom as his calling card. There, rather than university names or slogans on T-shirts, many wore T-shirts with the message, “A Condom a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.” Contraceptive information was printed on things such as bottle caps, towels, and ice cream sticks.

人口随时间的增长

The Growth of Population Over Time

人口发展史表明,人口增长速度显著,但并非持续增长。相反,人口增长经历了扩张和收缩的时期。然而,自1800年以来,世界人口迅速增长。

The past history of population has been one of significant but not continual growth. Instead, it has been marked by periods of expansion and contraction. Since 1800, however, the world population has grown rapidly.

19 世纪以来人口为何迅速增长1800 年以来世界人口的大幅增长直接源于死亡率的持续下降。造成这一现象的因素有二:首先,卫生和医疗保健领域的巨大进步;其次,人均粮食和制成品产量相对较快增长,因此大量人的生活水平大大高于最低生存水平。人均产量的增长部分得益于世界上一些欠发达地区的贸易开放和定居。但更主要的是,人口增长是工业革命的结果。19 世纪和 20 世纪科学技术的巨大进步使世界能够养活迅速增长的人口。

Why Population Has Grown Rapidly Since the 1800s The great increase in world population since 1800 has resulted directly from a continuing decline of the death rate. Two factors are responsible for this: first, great advances in sanitation and health care, and second, a relatively rapid increase in the per capita output of both food and manufactured goods, so that for large numbers of people standards of living rose substantially above subsistence level. In part, the increase in per capita output was made possible by the opening up for trade and settlement of some of the undeveloped areas of the world. Principally, however, the increase was a result of the Industrial Revolution. The great advances of science and technology in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made it possible for the world to support a rapidly rising population.

19世纪末以来人口增长不均衡19世纪后期,世界上一些欠发达地区开始享受现代科学、工业和交通运输带来的好处。卫生条件和医疗保健的改善开始降低死亡率,并提高人口增长率。一些欠发达地区,例如亚洲和拉丁美洲,人口增长速度远远超过了欧洲、美国和加拿大。

Unequal Population Growth Since the Late 1800s In the latter part of the nineteenth century, some of the less developed parts of the world began to experience some of the benefits of modern science, industry, and transportation. Sanitation and improved health care began to reduce the death rate and to increase the rate of population growth. Some of the less developed regions of the world, such as Asia and Latin America, made substantially greater gains in population than Europe, the United States, and Canada.

然而,世界发展中地区的人口增长往往以牺牲生活水平为代价。出生率居高不下,生产增长缓慢。如果粮食供应的增加暂时延缓了饥荒或缓解了营养不良,那么很快人口就会进一步增长。自1900年以来,亚洲人口增长了五倍;如今,全球60%以上的人口居住在亚洲。

However, increases in population in the developing areas of the world often occurred at the expense of standards of living. Birthrates remained high and production expanded slowly. If an increase in the food supply temporarily put off famine or relieved malnutrition, it was soon matched by a further increase in population. Since 1900, the population of Asia has increased fivefold; today, more than 60 percent of the people of the world are found there.

如图5.3所示,人口统计学家认为世界人口增长将越来越慢。他们预计人口净增长将在21世纪初下降,到22世纪初几乎停止。即便如此,所有国家也不太可能拥有相同的人口增长率。相反,人口增长较快的地区将被人口保持稳定甚至减少的地区所抵消。

As you can see in Figure 5.3, demographers believe that world population will grow more and more slowly. They see the net gains in population decreasing at the beginning of the twenty-first century and almost ending by the beginning of the twenty-second century. Even then, its unlikely that all countries will have the same population growth rate. Instead, regions with faster growing populations will be balanced by those where the population is stable or even shrinking.

计数问题

The Problem of Counting

本章提供的人口数字是估计值,有些估计值并不准确。事实上,除了最近几年的人口普查数据外,我们几乎没有基于实际人口普查的人口数字。人口普查是对居住在特定区域的人口数量进行的官方、系统统计。通常,在统计人口的同时,还会收集其他信息,例如年龄和性别。由于缺乏人口普查数据,我们只能对18世纪后期之前的人口数量和人口变化做出粗略的估计。

The population figures given in this chapter are estimates; some are not very good estimates. In fact, we have practically no population figures based on an actual census except for those of relatively recent years. A census is an official, systematic count of the number of people who live in a given area. Usually, when people are counted, other kinds of information about them, such as age and gender, are also gathered. Lacking any census figures, we can make only rough guesses about populations and population changes that occurred before the latter part of the eighteenth century.

欧洲国家首次可靠的人口普查是在1749年由瑞典进行的。美国的首次人口普查是在1790年进行的。大约在那个时候,其他几个欧洲国家也开始进行人口普查。到1850年,西欧、美国以及世界其他一些国家都获得了相当准确的数据。如今,我们拥有大多数国家相当可靠的人口统计数据;然而,即使是最简单的数字,例如一个国家到底有多少人口,这个问题常常引发争议。尽管美国的人口普查数据堪称世界一流,但究竟有多少人被漏算,仍然存在争议。例如,在1990年的人口普查中,美国人口普查局承认其实际漏算了约1000万人,并重复计算了约1120万人。2020年美国人口普查的最终汇编显示,美国总人口为330,104,702人。这意味着从2010年到2020年,美国总人口增加了约2200万人。

The first reliable census of a European country was taken by Sweden in 1749. In the United States, the first census was taken in 1790. About that time, several other European countries began to take censuses, and by 1850 reasonably accurate figures were available for western Europe, the United States, and some countries in other parts of the world. Today, we have fairly dependable population statistics for most countries; yet even the simplest numbers, such as how many people there are in a country, often are subject to debate. Although US census figures are about the best in the world, there are still debates about how many people were missed. For example, in the 1990 census, the Census Bureau accepted that it actually missed about ten million people in its count and that it double counted about 11.2 million people. Final compilation of the US census of 2020 shows the total US population at 330,104,702. This means that about twenty-two million people were added to the total population from 2010 to 2020.

图5.3预计未来世界人口增长将趋于平稳(来源:联合国 via OurWorldInData.org

Figure 5.3World population growth is expected to level off in the future. (Source: United Nations via OurWorldInData.org)

印度新德里拥挤的街道。© DB Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo

Crowded street in New Delhi, India. © DB Pictures/Alamy Stock Photo

为什么统计数据没有更准确?问问自己,如何设计一个系统来统计超过3亿不断流动的人口,包括无家可归者和无证移民,你很快就会明白其中的原因。关于是否应该使用抽样技术来“填补”那些未被单独统计的漏报人数,存在着激烈的争论。这个问题带有政治色彩,因为联邦拨款的分配通常取决于正式的人口普查数据。这个故事的寓意是,社会科学家会使用人口普查数据,但他们使用这些数据时会非常谨慎。他们对未来的估计甚至更加谨慎。

Why are the statistics not better? Ask yourself how you would work out a system to count more than 300 million people constantly on the move, including homeless and undocumented people, and you’ll quickly see why There is a significant debate about whether sampling techniques should be used to “fill in” for the numbers of people who are missed when they are not individually counted. The issue is politically charged because allocation of federal grants is often dependent on formal census counts. Tire moral of this story is that social scientists use census data, but they use them carefully. They use their own estimates of the future even more carefully.

马尔萨斯理论

The Malthusian Theory

两个多世纪以来,大多数关于人口问题的讨论都源于托马斯·罗伯特·马尔萨斯关于人口与人类生存资料关系的理论。马尔萨斯是一位英国国教牧师,也是一位早期英国经济学家。1798年,他发表了一篇短篇论文,名为《论人口原理及其对未来社会进步的影响》。

For more than two centuries, most discussions of the population problem have started from the theory of Thomas Robert Malthus concerning the relationship of population to the means of human subsistence. Malthus was a Church of England clergyman and an early English economist. In 1798, he published a short treatise called “An Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society.”

简而言之,马尔萨斯理论认为人口增长速度往往会超过生存资料的供给。这并不是一个新观点,但马尔萨斯将其阐述得如此清晰有力,以至于他的论文引起了广泛关注。他认为,人类受一种强大的自然本能——男女之间的吸引力——驱使着增加人口。因此,如果没有阻碍,人口将迅速增长,没有限制。此外,人口将以几何级数增长,即乘法增长。马尔萨斯的意思是,如果人口在25年内翻一番,那么在接下来的25年内也会再次翻一番,如此反复,永无止境。然而,他认为生存资料只能以算术级数增长,换句话说,增长速度缓慢且有限。因此,人口增长总是会对粮食供应造成压力。当粮食供应不足以养活更多人时,营养不良、饥荒、疾病和战争的“积极”抑制将阻止人口的进一步增长。

Reduced to its simplest terms, the Malthusian theory is the belief that a population tends to outrun the means of subsistence. This was not a new idea, but Malthus developed it with such clarity and force that his treatise attracted wide attention. He contended that people are impelled to increase their numbers by a powerful natural urge, the attraction between male and female. As a result, if there are no obstacles, population will increase rapidly and without limit. Furthermore, it will increase in geometric ratio—that is, by multiplication. By this Malthus meant that if a population could double in, say, twenty-five years, it would double again in the next twenty-five years, and so on indefinitely. He believed, however, that the means of subsistence could be increased only in arithmetic ratio—in other words, slowly and to a limited extent. Consequently, population would always tend to press against the food supply. When the food supply became inadequate to support more people, any further increase in population would be prevented by the “positive” checks of malnutrition, famine, disease, and war.

马尔萨斯认为人口增长必然会超过生活资料的增长速度,这一观点基于收益递减规律。就土地、劳动力和粮食产量之间的关系而言,收益递减规律意味着,如果在一定面积的土地上雇佣越来越多的人,即使总产量可能持续增长,但超过某个临界点后,人均产量就会下降。

Malthus’s belief that population growth would necessarily tend to outrun means of subsistence was based on the law of diminishing returns. In terms of the relationships between land, labor, and food output, the law of diminishing returns means that if more and more people are employed on a given area of land, even though total output may continue to expand, beyond a certain point average output per worker will shrink.

世界上的良田数量是有限的。一旦地球上所有未开发地区都已定居并或多或少地进行集约化耕作,进一步增加粮食产量的尝试将变得越来越无效,因为它们将触发收益递减规律。通过在已耕种的土地上雇用更多工人或耕种肥力较低的土地,仍然可以提高产量。然而,假设农业技术没有进步,这将导致人均产量下降,而且随着人们试图将产量提高到越来越高的水平,这种下降幅度将越来越大。农业技术的进步或许在很长一段时间内足以抵消这种收益递减的趋势,但如果人口持续增长,这种进步不可能无限期地持续下去。迟早,人均土地面积将变得极其稀少。

The amount of good farmland in the world is limited. Once all the undeveloped regions of the earth have been settled and cultivated more or less intensively, further attempts to increase food production will become less and less effective because they will bring into operation the law of diminishing returns. It will still be possible to increase output by employing more workers on the land already cultivated or by cultivating land that is less fertile. However, assuming no advances in agricultural technology, this will bring about a decrease in the average output per worker, a decrease that will become greater and greater as attempts are made to raise production to higher and higher levels. It is possible that advances in agricultural technology might, for a long time, more than offset this tendency toward diminishing returns, but they could not do so indefinitely if population continued to grow. Sooner or later, the amount of land per person would become impossibly small.

马尔萨斯认识到,某些预防性措施或许可以通过降低出生率来减缓人口增长。他将这些预防性措施概括为“道德约束”。他所说的“道德约束”显然是指婚前贞洁和晚婚。然而,他认为这些预防性措施不太可能得到充分实施,从而对降低出生率产生重大影响。马尔萨斯显然反对婚后禁欲和避孕。他认为,婚姻及其性满足应该承担生育孩子的风险以及抚养孩子的责任。否则,人们将不劳而获,失去改善经济状况的主要动力。

Malthus recognized that certain preventive checks might conceivably slow population growth by reducing the birthrate. These preventive checks he summarized under the general heading of “moral restraint.” By this term he apparently referred to premarital chastity and late marriage. However, he did not believe that these preventive checks were likely to be practiced sufficiently to have much effect in keeping down births. Malthus apparently opposed both postmarital abstinence and contraception. He thought that marriage and its sexual satisfaction should carry with them the risks of bringing children into the world along with the responsibility to support them. Otherwise, people would get something for nothing and be deprived of their main incentive for economic improvement.

由于马尔萨斯对这些预防性措施能否有效阻止人口增长对生存资料造成压力几乎不抱希望,他对大多数人的经济状况能否大幅改善持悲观态度。然而,在其论文的最终版本中,他承认尽管人口增长,但欧洲的状况正在缓慢改善,并表达了希望,希望最终能找到某种方法,使人类社会实现“逐步、渐进的改善”。

Because Malthus had little hope that the preventive checks would be effective in keeping population from exerting pressure on the means of subsistence, he was pessimistic about the chances of greatly improving the economic condition of most people. However, in the final edition of his essay, he recognized that conditions in Europe were slowly improving in spite of the growth of population, and he expressed the hope that some way might yet be found to make possible the “gradual and progressive improvement” of human society.

最优人口概念

The Concept of Optimal Population

鉴于技术发展水平,任何国家的人口增长超过一定水平都意味着生活水平下降。农田、燃料、木材、金属和其他资源将相对短缺。另一方面,人口过少也会带来不利影响。在人口稀少的地区,维持法律和秩序、提供医疗和医院服务以及设立学校往往十分困难。此外,人口数量不足以修建足够的道路或维持公共交通服务。最优人口是指能够使其成员福利最大化的人口。那么,从福利最大化的角度来看,最优或最佳的人口规模是多少呢?

Given the level of technological development, in any country growth of population beyond a certain point would mean lower standards of living. Relative shortages of farmlands, fuels, timber, metals, and other resources would develop. On the other hand, a very small population would also have disadvantages. In thinly populated areas, it is often difficult to maintain law and order, to provide medical and hospital services, or to provide schools. Also, there are not enough people to build adequate roads or to make it worthwhile to operate public transportation services. The optimal population is the population that would maximize welfare for its members. What, then, is the optimum, or best, size of population from the standpoint of maximizing welfare?

事实上,我们根本无法准确确定一个国家在其特定发展阶段的最佳人口数量。然而,对于任何国家来说,都可能存在一个临界点,超过这个临界点,人口增长就会使其资源紧张,导致人均产出下降,进而降低生活水平。

Actually, there is no way of determining with even approximate accuracy what the optimal population of a country would be at any given stage in its development. Yet for any country, there is likely a point beyond which an increase in population would strain its resources and reduce average output per worker, and hence reduce standards of living.

然而, 《 终极资源》一书的作者朱利安·西蒙对这一观点提出了质疑。他认为,人才是终极资源,人永远不嫌多。人们创造创意,并在此过程中创造出技术,让世界能够支持日益增长的人口。

This view, however, is disputed by Julian Simon, author of The Ultimate Resource, who argued that people are the ultimate resource and that there can be no such thing as too many people. People create ideas, and as they do they create the technology by which the world can support an ever-larger population.

大多数人口统计学家并不认同西蒙的乐观。他们认为印​​度、巴基斯坦和中国已经超过了最佳人口数量,而美国和西欧也已经达到了最佳人口数量。但这种观点主要由美国和西欧的人口统计学家持有,他们带有西方文化偏见,任何关于最佳人口的论述都不可避免地受到文化的影响。

Most demographers do not share Simon’s optimism. They believe that India, Pakistan, and China have already exceeded their optimal quantity and that the United States and western Europe have reached theirs. But such views are primarily held by demographers from the United States and western Europe who have a Western cultural bias, and any statements about optimal population are inevitably culturally determined.

例如,贫穷的欠发达国家将资源和其他商品短缺归咎于发达国家过度浪费的政策,强调消费而非节约。一些批评人士声称,西方国家利用人口问题和高出生率国家降低出生率的必要性,对这些刚刚摆脱殖民主义的地区进行另一种帝国主义控制。

Poor, underdeveloped nations, for example, lay the blame for shortages of resources and other goods on the excessively wasteful policies of developed countries, with their emphasis on consumption rather than conservation. Some critics claim that Western nations are using the population issue and the need for reduced birthrates in countries with high birthrates as another form of imperialist control over these areas, which were so recently freed from colonialism.

人口质量问题

The Question of Population Quality

过去,一些研究人类社会的学者一直担心社会力量可能导致人类群体生物学素质的严重下降。他们担心,这种危险在社会和经济进步最快的国家最为严重。他们认为,这种恶化可能表现为两种形式:(1)个体体质和耐力下降,身体缺陷发生率上升;(2)先天智力(即心智发展能力)下降。

In the past, some students of human society have been concerned about the possibility that social forces would bring about a serious deterioration of the biological quality of human populations. They feared that the danger would be greatest in the countries that have made the most social and economic progress. This deterioration, they felt, might take two forms: (1) a decline of the physical quality and stamina of individuals, with an increasing incidence of physical defects, and (2) a decline of native intelligence—that is, the capacity for mental development.

他们对这一现象可能的原因持有不同观点。其中一种观点认为,医学和科学的进步,以及其他诸多成果,使得体弱或身体残疾的儿童更容易生存、长大成人并生育子女。现代医学使得适者生存的原则失效,或者说被大大削弱。简而言之,他们认为,在最坏的情况下,人道主义和科学非但不能拯救人类,反而会最终毁灭人类。

Their arguments as to why this might happen were varied. One was that the advances we have made in medicine and science have meant, among other results, that it is easier for children who are weak, or who have physical disabilities to survive, grow to maturity, and have children of their own. Modern medicine makes the principle of the survival of the fittest inoperative, or greatly weakened. In short, they argue that, in a worst-case scenario, humanitarianism and science, instead of saving the human race, will ultimately destroy it.

如今的第二个论点是社会经济论点。该论点认为,随着双收入家庭的发展,聪明的人会选择事业而非婚姻家庭,并且会生育很少的孩子,而大多数孩子则留给弱势群体和受教育程度较低的人抚养。为了支持这一观点,他们通常会指出上层中产阶级与弱势群体之间的生育率差异。

A second argument being made today is a socioeconomic one. It goes as follows: With the development of the two-income family, intelligent individuals will choose careers over marriage and family and will have few children, leaving the less advantaged and less educated to bear the majority of the children. To support this view, they usually point to the difference in the birthrate between the upper and middle classes on the one hand and the less advantaged classes on the other.

没有人能够确定,经济和社会的成功在多大程度上源于上层阶级比其他阶层拥有的更多先天特质。我们知道,个人的成功既取决于社会环境,也取决于生物遗传。

No one can be certain to what extent economic and social success results from inborn qualities that the upper classes possess in greater measure than the other classes. We know that individual success depends on both social environment and biological inheritance.

两者之间总是存在相互作用。然而,要从这个显而易见的事实转向这样一种信念:我们可以决定一个社会经济群体生育子女而另一个群体不生育时社会状况是好是坏,这是一个艰难的一步,很少有人愿意迈出这一步。此外,大多数人甚至不愿考虑为确保只有特定群体享有生育权而采取的社会措施。

There is always an interplay between the two. But to move from this obvious fact to a belief that we can determine whether society will be better or worse off when one socioeconomic group has children while another does not is a difficult step that few are willing to take. Moreover, most people are unwilling even to consider the social measures required to ensure that only certain groups have reproductive rights.

鉴于现代基因工程的蓬勃发展,这些问题可能会越来越受到关注。例如,现在可以通过羊膜穿刺术在胎儿出生前很久就检查其性别和某些先天缺陷。一个女性的卵子可以移植到另一个女性体内,精子也可以冷冻用于人工授精。在本世纪的某个时候,我们或许能够改变精子和卵子的基因特征,从而控制儿童的性状。原则上,夫妻可以去基因工程公司订购他们想要的孩子类型(“女孩,长大后身高5英尺7英寸,体重128磅,智商217”)等等。由于这些可能性,社会面临着几个难题:是否应该允许这样的技术进步继续发展?如果允许,谁来决定哪些基因改造是可以接受的,哪些基因改造过于极端?

Given modern developments in genetic engineering, these issues are likely to become more and more discussed. For example, it is now possible with amniocentesis to check a fetus for gender and for some birth defects long before it is born. Eggs from one woman can be transplanted into another, and sperm can be frozen to be used for artificial insemination. Sometime in this century, it may be possible to change the genetic characteristics of sperm and eggs so that childrens characteristics can be controlled. In principle, couples might go to a genetic engineering company and order the type of child they want (“girl who will grow up to be 5 feet 7 inches tall and weigh 128 pounds, with an IQ of 217,” and so forth). Because of these possibilities, society faces a couple difficult questions: Should such technological advances be allowed to continue? And if they are, who gets to determine which modifications are acceptable and which ones go too far?

一些社会积极尝试控制其人口的遗传特征。例如,新加坡政府成功地实施了严厉的打击毒品交易、色情和乱扔垃圾的法律。20世纪80年代,新加坡实施了一项计划,承诺向结婚生子的女大学毕业生提供额外特权。接受绝育手术的受教育程度较低的母亲可获得5000美元的奖金。政府声称实施这些法律的理由是,未受过教育的女性生育的孩子数量是大学毕业生的两倍,总理声称这将“耗尽人才库”并且“能力水平会下降”。然而,许多民众对该计划提出了强烈的反对意见:女性和男性都认为该计划不公平;科学家质疑该计划所依据的假设;受教育程度较低的女性不愿接受绝育手术,即使只是为了5000美元;女性也不愿被当作繁殖牲畜。大约一年半后,这项实验被取消。

Some societies have taken an active role in trying to control the genetic qualities of their population. For instance, Singapore, whose government has successfully administered severe laws against drug dealing, pornography, and littering, in the 1980s instituted a program whereby extra privileges were promised to female university graduates who married and had children. Bonuses of $5,000 were awarded to less educated mothers who submitted to sterilization. The government’s stated reasons for these laws were that uneducated women were having twice the number of children as college graduates were, and the prime minister claimed that this would “deplete the talent pool” and that the “level of competence would decline.” However, many segments of the population had strong objections to the program: both women and men perceived the program as unfair; scientists questioned the assumptions on which it was based; less educated women did not want to be sterilized, even for $5,000; and women did not want to be treated as breeding stock. The experiment was withdrawn after about a year and a half.

生态学:地理、人口和环境的相互作用

Ecology: The Interaction of Geography, Demography, and Environment

在考虑环境问题和生态学时,地理和人口统计学是相辅相成的。环境是所有影响人类机体的外部因素的总和。这些因素通过产生视觉、听觉、味觉、嗅觉和其他身体感觉的物理刺激发挥作用。这些感觉使我们意识到周围的环境,并通过它们,我们能够解读环境并对其做出反应。

Geography and demography come together in a consideration of environmental issues and ecology. The environment is the sum of all the external influences that impinge on the human organism. These influences exert their effects through physical stimuli that produce sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and other bodily sensations. These sensations make us aware of our environment, and through them we are able to interpret our environment and react to it.

社会环境由我们周围环境中属于人类或源于人类的元素构成。自然环境由我们周围环境中的非人类元素构成。社会环境的总体特征主要取决于我们所属群体的文化。自然环境的特征主要取决于我们居住地的气候、水资源、土壤、地形、动植物和矿产资源。然而,一旦人类在某个地区长期生活,他们必然会对环境做出改变,无论好坏。因此,在人造物理环境和自然环境的某些方面之间划出一条清晰的界限就变得困难了。

The social environment is composed of the elements in our surroundings that are human or of human origin. The natural environment is composed of the nonhuman elements in our surroundings. The general character of our social environment depends chiefly on the culture of the group to which we belong. The character of our natural environment depends primarily on the climate, water resources, soil, topography, plant and animal life, and mineral resources of the part of the world in which we live. However, once human beings have lived in an area for a long time, they are certain to have made changes, for better or worse, in their environment. It then becomes difficult to draw a sharp line between the constructed physical environment and some aspects of the natural environment.

生态平衡

The Ecological Balance

生态学是一门研究生物与其环境之间相互作用的科学。每种生物的环境不仅包括无生命世界,还包括所有直接或间接影响它的其他生物物种。它包括其自身成员的种群密度及其行为特征。

Ecology is the science concerned with the interactions between living things and their environment. The environment of each species of organism includes not only the inanimate world but also all other living species that affect it directly or indirectly. It includes the population density of its own members and the character of their behavior.

人类生态学是生态学的一个分支学科,研究人类社会如何适应环境。它考察人群适应周围环境的过程,并考虑实现适应的技术和社会组织类型。人类生态学将一些生物科学的发现应用于社会科学所研究的问题。

Human ecology is the part of ecology that deals with the way in which human societies adjust to their environments. It considers the processes by which populations adapt to their surroundings, taking into account the technology and the types of social organization by which adjustment is achieved. Human ecology applies some of the findings of the biological sciences to problems dealt with by the social sciences.

自然界通常存在着趋向生态平衡的运动。生态平衡指的是,每种动植物凭借其自身的特性和需求,适应环境并得以生存;而其他物种也同样适应环境,阻止其无限扩张并排挤它们,从而达到一种状态。大多数物种依赖其他物种获取食物或满足其他需求。虽然自然生态平衡并非绝对静止,但它通常会在很长一段时间内缓慢变化。能够更好地适应环境的新物种不断进化,可能会摧毁或排挤旧物种,导致后者灭绝;或者,气候变化可能会导致某些物种无法生存。

In the world of nature, there is normally a movement toward ecological balance. Ecological balance is the term applied to the state achieved when each plant or animal species, with its own characteristics and needs, has adjusted to its environment and survived, and when other species, which have likewise adjusted to the environment, prevent it from expanding indefinitely and from crowding them out. Most species depend on other species for food or for meeting other needs. Though the natural ecological balance is not absolutely static, normally it changes slowly over long periods of time. New species that can make superior adjustments to their environment evolve and may destroy or crowd out old species and render the latter extinct, or changes in climate may occur such that some species cannot survive.

现代社会导致世界许多地方的生态平衡发生急剧变化。有时,从人类的角度来看,结果是好的,但有时却几乎是灾难性的。兔子被引入澳大利亚后,由于没有天敌,数量激增数百万,最终演变成全国性的问题。工程师们开凿圣劳伦斯航道,导致七鳃鳗进入五大湖,几乎彻底摧毁了白鲑。人类活动导致昆虫害虫从世界一处传入另一处,往往造成灾难性的后果。二战后,一种名为滴滴涕(DDT)的杀虫剂在世界范围内广泛使用,虽然控制或消灭了有害昆虫,但它也摧毁或损害了其他动物的生命,甚至人类的健康。

Modern times have brought about rapid changes in the ecological balance in many parts of the world. Sometimes, the results have been good from the human point of view, but sometimes they have been almost disastrous. When rabbits were introduced into Australia, where they had no natural enemies and multiplied by the millions, they became a national problem. By building the St. Lawrence Seaway, engineers allowed lampreys to enter the Great Lakes, where they almost completely destroyed the whitefish. People have caused the introduction of insect pests from one part of the world to another, often with disastrous results. After World War II, the nearly worldwide use of an insecticide called DDT did indeed control or eliminate undesirable insects, but it also destroyed or damaged other forms of animal life and even human health.

坦白说,我认为我们会后悔将这些生物引入环境© Alamy

Frankly, I think we’ll regret introducing these organisms into the environment © Alamy

威胁生态平衡的例子有很多:全球变暖、工业污染、烟囱排放、酸雨、地下水位下降,以及肥沃土壤和动植物栖息地被覆盖。这些远非详尽无遗,我们甚至还没有试图描述整个大陆(例如非洲)发生的生态灾难。自20世纪70年代以来,美国不得不面对这样一个事实:许多工业、军事和农业化学品不仅对动物生命造成致命影响,而且还对人类健康产生长期影响。消除这些化学品并修复其破坏(在可能的情况下)的成本是天文数字。这些成本包括:监管危险废物处置、发现和抢救先前使用过的场地、寻找已造成问题的化学品的替代物,以及设计生态安全的方法来处理放射性医疗技术等必不可少的活动产生的废物。如今,鉴于技术的飞速发展,发生不可逆转的变化的可能性巨大。例如,全球商业和旅游业的蓬勃发展已经意味着植物、动物和昆虫已经迁徙到病毒迁徙到自然栖息地之外,并挤占或消灭了迁徙地的动植物。一些科学家预测,病毒的迁徙也将以同样的方式,将那些几乎无法治愈的疾病传播到远离这些病毒先前限制传播的地区。

Examples of threats to the ecological balance are many: global warming, industrial pollution, smokestack emissions, acid rain, depletion of water tables, and paving over of fertile soil and plant and animal habitats. These by no means exhaust the list, and we have not even attempted to describe ecological catastrophes on whole continents, such as Africa. Since the 1970s, the United States has had to face the fact that many industrial, military, and agricultural chemicals are not only lethally affecting animal life but are also exercising long-term effects on human health. The cost of eliminating these chemicals and repairing their ravages (where possible) is astronomical. These costs include the policing of hazardous waste disposal, discovering and salvaging previously used sites, finding alternative chemicals to those that have caused trouble, and devising ecologically safe methods for disposal of waste from indispensable activities such as radioactive medical technology. Today, given snowballing technological growth, the possibility of irreversible change is enormous. For example, the explosion in worldwide commerce and travel has already meant that plants, animals, and insects have traveled outside their natural habitats and are crowding out or eliminating plants and animals in the localities to which they emigrate. Some scientists predict that, in that same way, the migration of viruses will spread nearly untreatable diseases far from the sites to which such viruses were formerly confined.

污染

Pollution

生态学家主要关注的是污染——生产过程对我们自然资源基础的破坏。在过去的五十年里,河流、湖泊和森林受到了污水和工业废物的广泛污染。在许多城市中心,纯净的空气也变得稀缺,居民经常不得不呼吸混合着汽车尾气、灰尘以及垃圾焚烧、焚烧炉、工厂烟囱和火炬产生的各种废物的空气。在一些地区,未经妥善处理的有毒化学物质和各种有害废物已经侵入土壤,有时整个社区都必须搬迁,同时清理他们以前的家园。在其他社区,人们怀疑各种疾病都是由这类问题引起的,但目前似乎没有切实可行的清理措施。在美国,一项在二十世纪末颁布的联邦法律规定,到2000年,核废料必须安全处置在“数千年”内不会发生泄漏的地点。这项命令最终被证明无法实施,部分原因是它似乎超出了现有技术的范畴,但主要原因是人们不希望这样的地点靠近自己的居住地。我们看到,由于各地方都力图避免被选中,因此存在着激烈的争论。“邻避”(NIMBY,Not In My Back Yard)已成为现代社会的口号。

A major concern of ecologists is pollution—the destruction of our natural resource base by the productive process. Over the past fifty years, there has been extensive pollution of rivers, lakes, and forests by sewage and industrial wastes. Pure air also has become scarce in many of our urban centers, where the inhabitants often must breathe a mixture of air combined with auto fumes, dust, and various waste products from trash fires, incinerators, and the smokestacks and flares of industrial plants. Improperly disposed toxic chemicals and various noxious waste products have invaded the soil in some areas, and sometimes whole communities must be moved while the sites of their former homes are cleaned up. In other communities, people suspect that various illnesses are caused by this kind of problem, but no cleanup seems immediately practical. In the United States, a federal law enacted near the end of the twentieth century mandated that by 2000 nuclear waste must be safely disposed of in sites where no leakage will occur for “thousands of years.” This mandate proved impossible to implement, partly because it was seemingly beyond current technology, but principally because people did not want such a site anywhere near where they lived. We are seeing much vigorous disagreement as localities all strive to avoid being chosen. NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) has become a watchword of modern times.

有些污染是生产的必然结果,它给社会带来了一个权衡:我们是想要更多的物质,还是想要更纯净的环境?在做决定时,必须兼顾成本和收益。

Some pollution is an inevitable consequence of production, presenting society with a trade-off: Do we want more material things, or do we want a more pristine environment? In making that decision, both the costs and benefits must be considered.

尽管在不考虑成本的情况下,人们能够认同节约和大力防治污染的必要性,但一旦考虑到成本,共识就会大大减少。让我们来考虑一下其中一些成本。这些成本包括对个人行为的限制、产业和就业岗位的迁移、新的官僚机构以及昂贵的新技术的开发。在评估污染问题时,必须考虑成本和收益。因此,我们不太可能决定制定“零污染”政策;这根本无法实施。即使接近“少量”污染的标准,对许多人来说,成本也过于高昂。相反,我们可能会选择一个“最优”的污染水平。

Although people can agree on the need for conservation and strong anti-pollution efforts when costs are not considered, when costs are considered there is significantly less agreement. Let’s consider some of these costs. They involve restrictions on individual actions, relocation of industry and jobs, new bureaucracy, and the development of expensive new technology. In assessing the issue of pollution, the costs as well as the benefits must be considered. Therefore, it is unlikely that we will decide to institute a “no pollution” policy; that would be impossible to implement. And even approaching a standard of “little” pollution, for many, would be too expensive. Instead we are likely to choose an “optimal level” of pollution.

自 20 世纪 60 年代以来,美国在防治污染方面取得了长足的进步,但这并非易事。核心问题是所谓的“公地悲剧”。由于环境属于整个社会,而不是特定个人,因此没有个人有动力去关心它。许多政府反污染机构应运而生。环境保护署 (EPA)是最重要的政府反污染机构;它指导反污染工作并监测环境问题。它取得的一些成果令人瞩目。20 世纪 50 年代初,伊利湖受到周边地区未经处理的污水的严重污染,以至于许多动物无法在其中栖息。如今,伊利湖正在稳步恢复。政府强制要求建立污水处理厂,并禁止企业向湖中倾倒工业废水。

Since the 1960s, the United States has made considerable gains in fighting pollution, but it has not been easy. The central problem is what is called the “tragedy of the commons.” Because the environment belongs to society as a whole, and not to specific individuals, no individual has the incentive to care for it. A number of governmental anti-pollution agencies have been established. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the most important government anti-pollution agency; it directs antipollution efforts and monitors environmental problems. Some of its gains have been impressive. In the early 1950s, Lake Erie was so polluted by untreated sewage from surrounding areas that many forms of animal life could not inhabit it. Today, it is well on the way to recovery. Sewage treatment plants were mandated, and firms were prevented from dumping industrial waste into the lake.

一名男子在有毒废物处理场处理一条鱼。 © PhotoAlto/Alamy Stock Photo

A man disposes of a fish at a toxic waste disposal site. © PhotoAlto/Alamy Stock Photo

为了减少石油污染,英国通过了处理石油泄漏的法律,规定造成泄漏的公司必须负责清理泄漏。针对其他类型污染,英国也通过了类似的法律。

To reduce pollution from oil, laws were passed dealing with oil spills so that companies responsible for the spillage are responsible for cleaning them up. Similar laws have been passed concerning other types of pollution.

许多环境问题都具有国际层面。例如气候变化及其伴随的全球变暖。气候科学家已确定,全球变暖在很大程度上是由化石燃料燃烧产生的温室气体和二氧化碳排放造成的。如果不采取措施,海平面将大幅上升。其结果将是低洼地区被洪水淹没,极端天气事件的频率和严重程度将增加。无论排放发生在何处,其影响都将波及全球。因此,这是一个全球性问题,而非单个国家的问题。如果要有效应对,就必须在全球范围内采取行动。

Many environmental issues have international dimensions. An example is climate change and the associated global warming. Climate scientists have determined that this global warming is caused, to a large degree, by greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide emissions associated with the burning of fossil fuel, and that unless something changes, there will be significant rises in ocean levels. The result will be that low lying areas will be flooded, and extreme weather events will increase in frequency and severity. The effects will be worldwide, regardless of where the emission takes place. So it is a global problem, not an individual state problem, which if it is to be dealt with effectively, will have to be dealt with globally.

出于对气候变化影响的担忧,各国试图组织集体行动来防止或减缓全球变暖,这始于 1997 年在日本举行的会议,该会议促成了《京都议定书》的达成。工业化国家同意减少温室气体(尤其是二氧化碳)的排放。美国有些人对只要求工业化国家减排而中国和印度等发展中国家无需遵守感到不满。将发展中国家排除在外的理由是,发展中国家的排放开始时间晚于工业化国家,因此需要在经济上“迎头赶上”。《京都议定书》将 2000 年定为完成日期。美国拒绝签署,2000 年美国的排放量比 1990 年的水平高出约 13%。美国并非唯一未能实现目标的国家;没有一个工业化国家在规定的最后期限前完成。由于该议定书没有执行机制,因此通过将最后期限一再提前来“处理”轮胎问题。

Concerns about the effects of climate change led countries to try to organize collective action to prevent or slow global warming, starting with a 1997 meeting in Japan that led to the Kyoto Protocol, in which industrialized countries agreed to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. Some in the United States were upset that only industrial countries were required to reduce emissions and that developing countries such as China and India did not have to comply. The exception of developing countries was justified by the argument that they began emitting later than industrial countries, and they need to “catch up” economically. The Kyoto Protocol set 2000 as the date for its accomplishment. The United States refused to sign, and in 2000 US emissions were about 13 percent above 1990 levels. The US was not the only country not to meet the goals; no industrial nation met the required deadline. Tire problems of the protocol, which had no enforcement mechanism, were “dealt” with by setting the deadline further and further ahead.

美国为不签署该议定书辩解说,该协议将对美国经济不利,而且即使尝试也不会奏效。在接下来的十年中,各种国际倡议应运而生,包括“晴朗天空倡议”、哥本哈根气候会议、各国承诺减少排放的“巴黎协定”以及 2021 年在格拉斯哥举行的联合国气候变化会议 COP26。在这些会议上,制定了各种通过自愿措施应对全球变暖的方法,例如奖励减少污染行业的限额与交易方法。在限额与交易方法中,确定一个污染总量(限额),新的污染源必须从现有污染者那里购买污染权,现有污染者同意减少一个抵消量,以使总污染量不超过设定的限额(交易)。

The United States justified not signing the protocol by arguing that the agreement would be bad for the US economy and, moreover, would not work even if attempted. Over the next decade, various international initiatives were developed, including the Clear Skies Initiative, the Copenhagen Climate Conference, the Paris Accord in which countries pledged to reduce emissions, and COP26, a U.N. climate change conference held in Glasgow in 2021. At these meetings, various methods were developed to combat global warming with voluntary measures, such as a cap-and-trade approach that rewards industries that reduce pollution. In a cap-and-trade approach, a total amount of pollution is determined (the cap), and new sources of pollution must buy the rights to pollute from existing polluters who agree to lower their pollution by an offsetting amount so that total pollution does not increase above the set limit (the trade).

保护和汽油及石油的价格

Conservation and the Price of Gasoline and Oil

经济学家指出,虽然自愿减排固然重要,但有效政策的真正驱动力可能是改变使用化石燃料的激励机制,而这源于价格的变化——要么是碳基燃料价格上涨,要么是风能和太阳能等更环保的技术价格下降。最初,许多环保人士认为石油正在变得稀缺,我们过度使用了资源。经济学家指出,如果真是这样,问题就会迎刃而解:随着石油变得稀缺,石油价格也会上涨。这样一来,人们就会节约使用石油和天然气,驾驶节能汽车,使用电动汽车或氢燃料电池汽车等耗油量更低的新技术。

Economists point out that, while voluntary reductions of emissions are great, the real driver of an effective policy will likely be changes in incentives to use fossil fuels, which comes from changes in price—either carbon based fuels become more expensive, or greener technologies such as wind and solar become cheaper. Initially, many environmentalists believed that oil was becoming scarcer and that we were overusing our resources. Economists pointed out that if that were the case, the problem would solve itself: as oil became scarcer the price of oil would rise. As it did people would economize on their use of oil and gas, driving fuel-efficient cars, using new technologies that use less oil such as electric cars or hydrogen based fuel cell cars.

石油价格远未上涨到改变人们行为所需的水平,很大程度上是因为石油并非那么稀缺。水力压裂等新的石油勘探和开采技术得到了发展,这大幅增加了未来五十年的石油供应量,并压低了价格。汽油价格并没有涨到每加仑5美元或10美元——如果涨到这个水平,美国消费者对SUV的热情就会消退——而是维持在3美元左右。如果要使用其他技术,就必须以更低的价格提供能源。为了鼓励使用其他技术,可以对这些技术进行补贴,各州和联邦政府就是这样做的,或者对石油和天然气的使用征收高额税费。(经济学家建议每加仑征收3美元或4美元的税,这意味着汽油价格将上涨到每加仑6美元。)

The price of oil didn’t rise to anywhere near the level that was needed to change behavior, in large part because oil wasn’t that scarce. New technologies to find and extract oil were developed, such as fracking, which increased the amount of available oil for the next fifty years enormously, and held down the price. Rather than rising to $5 or $10 a gallon, prices that would have ended the US consumer’s love of SUVs, gas prices stayed at about $3. If other technologies are to be used, they would have to provide energy at prices cheaper than that. To encourage that, these other technologies can be subsidized, which states and the federal government did, or oil and gas use would have to be significantly taxed. (Economists have suggested a $3 or $4 per gallon tax, which would mean the price of gas would rise to $6 per gallon.)

但最令人鼓舞的迹象在于绿色替代能源的价格,即使不考虑补贴,其价格也在下降。太阳能和风能技术在储能能力方面的进步正在降低“绿色”能源的价格,使其无需依赖巨额补贴就能与化石燃料技术竞争。未来十年,电动汽车很可能将在能源市场的很大一部分领域取代燃油汽车。

But the most hopeful signs are in the price of green alternatives, which have been falling even independent of subsidies. Technological advances in energy storage capabilities in solar and wind technologies are lowering the price of “green” energy, making it competitive with fossil fuel technology without the large subsidies that have made them competitive to date. Over the next decade, electric cars will likely replace gas cars in large portions of the energy market.

结论

Conclusion

本章回顾了社会面临的地理、人口和生态问题,并展示了社会应对这些问题的一些方法。在这三种类型中,地理问题最为稳定,但随着新技术的发展,这些问题也可能发生改变。例如,互联网使更多人能够在更多农村地区工作,并扩大了企业经营的范围。

This chapter has reviewed geographic, demographic, and ecological problems that society faces and has shown some of the ways society meets them. Of the three types, the geographic problems are the most static, but with new technologies even these can change. The Internet, for example, has made it possible for more individuals to work in more rural areas and has increased the range of areas where businesses can operate.

人口问题瞬息万变:随着社会变得更加富裕,人口增长通常会自行下降。然而,人口问题在许多国家的社会问题中扮演着核心角色。虽然人口问题通常会随着国家富裕程度的提高而得到改善,但生态问题往往会变得更加严重。然而,社会的财富也使其拥有了应对这些生态问题的手段。至于是否真正解决这些问题,则是一个政治问题;通常情况下,即使有手段,却缺乏政治意愿。

Demographic problems are constantly changing: As societies become richer, their population growth generally decreases on its own. Nonetheless, population problems play central roles in many countries’ social problems. Whereas demographic problems generally improve as a country gets richer, ecological problems often become more severe. But the wealth of society also gives it the means to deal with those ecological problems. Whether it actually does deal with them is a political issue; often, even though the means are there, the political will is not.

社会科学家研究这些问题,并致力于寻找规避政治问题的替代方案。找到一个可接受的替代方案并非易事,但这项工作通常能加深对问题的理解,并找到替代方案。

Social scientists study such problems and work on alternative solutions that circumvent the political problems. Finding an acceptable alternative is seldom easy, but that work generally leads to a better understanding of the problem and of alternative solutions.

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 了解世界地理是一项重要技能。
  • Knowing the geography of the world is an important skill.
  • 出生率和死亡率相互作用决定人口增长。
  • The birthrate and the death rate interact to determine population growth.
  • 世界人口数量一直在波动,但自 19 世纪以来一直大幅增长。
  • The world population has fluctuated over time, but since the 1800s it has grown substantially.
  • 马尔萨斯理论认为人口增长速度往往会超过生存手段的增长速度。
  • The Malthusian theory is the belief that population tends to outrun the means of subsistence.
  • 边际收益递减规律:如果在一定面积的土地上雇佣越来越多的人,那么超过某个点后——尽管总产出可能继续扩大——每个工人的平均产出将会减少。
  • The law of diminishing marginal returns: If more and more people are employed on a given area of land, beyond a certain point—even though the total output may continue to expand—average output per worker will shrink.
  • 我们世界的生态受到人类活动、物种的生存和死亡、气候变化、导致污染的生产变化以及保护措施的影响。
  • Tire ecology of our world is affected by human action, the life and death of species, climate changes, productive changes that result in pollution, and conservation measures.
  • 经济生产目标和环境目标之间往往存在权衡。
  • There is often a trade-off between economic production goals and environmental goals.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 人口普查(84)
  • census (84)
  • 人口统计学(81)
  • demography (81)
  • 生态平衡(89)
  • ecological balance (89)
  • 生态学 (89)
  • ecology (89)
  • 环境 (88)
  • environment (88)
  • 环境保护局(EPA)(90)
  • Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (90)
  • 地理(81)
  • geography (81)
  • 人类生态学(89)
  • human ecology (89)
  • 《京都议定书》 (91)
  • Kyoto Protocol (91)
  • 收益递减规律(86)
  • law of diminishing returns (86)
  • 马尔萨斯理论 (86)
  • Malthusian theory (86)
  • 自然环境 (89)
  • natural environment (89)
  • 最优人口(87)
  • optimal population (87)
  • 巴黎协定 (91)
  • Paris Accord (91)
  • 污染 (90)
  • pollution (90)
  • 社会环境 (89)
  • social environment (89)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 地理学关注哪些问题?
  2. What are some of the questions that geography is concerned with?
  3. 什么是 GIS?它如何用于社会科学研究?
  4. What is the GIS, and how might it be used in social science research?
  5. 地理学如何与社会学互动?
  6. How does geography interact with sociology?
  7. 世界上有多少人?
  8. How many people are there in the world?
  9. 世界上人口最多的国家是哪个?解释一个国家在试图限制人口增长时面临的一些问题,包括成功限制人口增长后可能遇到的问题。
  10. What is the world’s most populous country? Explain some of the problems that a country faces in trying to limit its population growth, including the problems it will have if it is successful.
  11. 什么是马尔萨斯主义?托马斯·马尔萨斯的预言实现了吗?
  12. What is the Malthusian doctrine? Have the predictions of Thomas Malthus come true?
  13. 找出过去 200 年来世界人口增长的一些原因。
  14. Identify some of the reasons why the world population has grown in the past 200 years.
  15. 限制人口有哪些可能的方法?请列举自然原因以及政府或其他政策鼓励的原因。
  16. What are some possible ways to limit population? Mention natural causes as well as those encouraged by government or other policies.
  17. 在实践中,所有限制人口增长的政策都是可以接受的吗?如果不是,你会反对哪些政策?
  18. In practice, are all policies for limitation of population growth acceptable? If not, which ones would you argue against?
  19. 污染的成本有哪些?污染又能带来哪些好处?清理受污染区域的成本非常高昂。你能想到哪些方法来支付清理费用?
  20. What are some of the costs of pollution? What are some of the gains from pollution? It is very expensive to clean up areas that have been polluted. What are some ways you can think of to pay for such cleanups?
  21. 你是“增长国”(Growthlandia)的政府规划师。你想知道在哪里新建学校,在哪里关闭学校,以及是否应该启动一项雄心勃勃的计划来增加就业机会。你想知道“增长国”目前的人口构成情况,以及未来十五年人口结构可能发生的变化。
  22. You are a government planner in the country of Growthlandia. You would like to know where to build new schools, where to close schools, and whether it makes sense to embark on an ambitious program to expand the number of job opportunities. What would you like to know about the composition of Growthlandia’s population now and how that population is likely to change in the next fifteen years?
  23. 如果汽油价格为每加仑 10 美元,你的生活会有什么不同?
  24. How would your life be different if gas cost $10 per gallon?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 访问地图网站(例如www.atlapedia.com/),查看某个国家或地区。查看其地形和政治版图。它的边界是什么?哪些边界是自然形成的?
  2. Go to an atlas site (for example, www.atlapedia.com/) and look at a country or region. Look at its physical and political map. What borders it? Which borders are natural?
  3. 在网上搜索“葛藤”。它是什么?它有什么好处?又对美国东南部有什么危害?
  4. Do an Internet search for kudzu. What is it? What are its benefits and what are its harms to the southeastern United States?
  5. 联合国在其《世界妇女进步报告》(http://progress.unwomen.org/)中认为哪些因素对妇女权利构成重大制约?
  6. What does the UN see as a significant constraint on womens rights in its Progress of the Worlds Women Report at http://progress.unwomen.org/?
  7. 请访问“ www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/08/14/why-the-former-ussr-has-far-fewer-men-thanwomen/ ”。哪两个国家的女性比例最高?男性比例最高?
  8. Go to “www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/08/14/why-the-former-ussr-has-far-fewer-men-thanwomen/.” What two countries have the highest percentage of females? Of males?
  9. 根据美国环保署 (EPA) 的数据,臭氧层是什么?www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/basic-ozone-layerscience。您所在邮政编码地区的今日紫外线指数是多少?www.epa.gov/sunwise/uvindex.html
  10. What is the ozone layer according to the EPA, www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/basic-ozone-layerscience? What is today’s UV index value for your zip code (www.epa.gov/sunwise/uvindex.html)?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 康纳利,马修,《致命的误解:控制世界人口的斗争》马萨诸塞州剑桥:哈佛大学出版社,2010 年。
  • Connelly, Matthew, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.
  • 《当前人口报告》,华盛顿特区:美国人口普查局。每月发布美国人口估计数据;不定期发布特别报告。
  • Current Population Reports, Washington DC: US Bureau of the Census. Population estimates for the United States issued monthly; special reports from time to time.
  • 方梅,《独生子女:中国最激进实验的故事》,马萨诸塞州波士顿:霍顿·米夫林·哈考特出版社,2016 年。
  • Fong, Mei, One Child: The Story of China’s Most Radical Experiment, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
  • 弗里德曼,托马斯·L.,《世界是平的:二十一世纪简史》,纽约:法勒、斯特劳斯和吉鲁出版社,2005 年。
  • Friedman, Thomas L., The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2005.
  • Friednjan,Thomas L.,《炎热、平坦、拥挤》,纽约:Farrar,Straus,& Giroux,2008 年。
  • Friednjan, Thomas L., Hot, Flat, and Crowded, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2008.
  • 盖茨,比尔,《如何避免气候灾难》,纽约:克诺夫出版社,2021 年。
  • Gates, Bill, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, New York: Knopf, 2021.
  • 杰夫·古德尔,《水将至:海平面上升、城市下沉和文明世界的重塑》,纽约:小布朗公司,2017 年。
  • Goodell, Jeff, The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities and the Remaking of the Civilized World, New York: Little Brown and Co., 2017.
  • Hanski,Ilkka,《来自岛屿的信息:全球生物多样性之旅》,伊利诺伊州芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社,2016 年。
  • Hanski, Ilkka, Messages from Islands: A Global Biodiversity Tour, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016.
  • 科尔伯特,伊丽莎白,《灾难现场笔记:人类、自然与气候变化》,纽约:布卢姆斯伯里出版社,2006 年。
  • Kolbert, Elizabeth, Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change, New York: Bloomsbury, 2006.
  • 马尔萨斯,托马斯,《人口原理或其对人类幸福的过去和现在的影响》纽约:剑桥大学出版社,1992 年(首次出版于 1798 年)。
  • Malthus, Thomas, An Essay on the Principle of Population, or, a View of Its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992 (first published in 1798).
  • 马歇尔,蒂姆,《地理的囚徒:十张解释世界一切的地图》纽约:斯克里布纳出版社,2015 年。
  • Marshall, Tim, Prisoner of Geography: 10 Maps That Explain Everything about the World, New York: Scribner, 2015.
  • 米德,玛格丽特,编辑,《文化模式与技术变革》,纽约:新美国图书馆/导师,1955 年。
  • Mead, Margaret, ed., Cultural Patterns and Technical Change, New York: New American Library/Mentor, 1955.
  • 皮尔斯,弗雷德,《即将到来的人口崩溃和我们星球的惊人未来》马萨诸塞州波士顿:Beacon Press,2011 年。
  • Pearce, Fred, The Coming Population Crash and Our Planets Surprising Future, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2011.
  • Sala, Enric,《自然的本质:我们为什么需要野性》,华盛顿特区:国家地理,2020 年。
  • Sala, Enric, The Nature of Nature: Why We Need the Wild, Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2020.
  • 西蒙,朱利安,《终极资源》,新泽西州普林斯顿:普林斯顿大学出版社,1981 年。
  • Simon, Julian, The Ultimate Resource, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981.
  • 《美国统计摘要》华盛顿特区:美国人口普查局。每年发布一次。
  • Statistical Abstract of the United States, Washington, DC: US Bureau of the Census. Issued annually.
  • 惠特比,安德鲁,《人民的总和》纽约:Basic Books,2020 年。
  • Whitby, Andrew, The Sum of the People, New York: Basic Books, 2020.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第六技术与社会

chapter 6Technology and Society

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-6

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-6

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 定义技术并解释其重要性
  • Define technology and explain its importance
  • 讨论技术在社会变革中扮演的角色
  • Discuss the role that technology plays in social change
  • 解释工业革命如何显著改变社会的各个方面
  • Explain how the Industrial Revolution significantly changed all aspects of society
  • 解释技术与自然资源之间的关系
  • Explain the relationship between technology and natural resources
  • 区分工业革命与信息革命
  • Distinguish the Industrial Revolution from the Information Revolution
  • 推测未来的技术发展将如何改变社会
  • Speculate on how technological developments in the future will change society

2017 年 5 月 23 日,一个重大事件发生了。谷歌的 AlphaGo 击败了世界上最优秀的人类围棋选手。为什么这具有重大意义?毕竟,计算机算法已经在《危险边缘》和国际象棋中获胜。为什么在围棋中获胜会有所不同?原因是围棋是一种高度直观的游戏,人们认为人类具有独特的适应能力;围棋需要直觉和想象力,以及机械的计算能力。如果计算机算法能够在围棋中获胜,那么它们几乎可以完成人类所做的任何脑力劳动,只是更快更好。很快,计算机也可能在艺术、音乐和情感咨询方面做得更好……总之:为了做人类传统上做的事情,技术的变化正在淘汰人类。自人类围棋失败以来已经五年了,变化正以惊人的速度发生。所谓的人工智能无处不在——传统的做事方式也在不断变化。

On May 23, 2017, a momentous event occurred. Google’s AlphaGo beat the best human Go player in the world. Why was this momentous? After all, computer algorithms had already won in Jeopardy and Chess. Why was winning in Go different? The reason is that Go is a highly intuitive game at which it was believed that humans were uniquely adapted; Go requires intuition and imagination, as well as rote computing power. If computer algorithms can win at Go, they can do just about any of the mental work that people do, only quicker and better. Soon, computers can also likely do art better, music better, emotional counseling better. . . . Bottom line: To do what humans have traditionally done, changes in technology are making humans obsolete. It has been five years since human’s Go defeat, and the changes are occurring at warp speed. What is called artificial intelligence is ubiquitous—and traditional ways of doing things are in constant change.

本章将探讨这些问题。首先,我们将探讨技术与社会变革之间关系这一广泛问题,并提供一些案例研究,使这一过程更加贴近现实。然后,我们将讨论传统的工业革命,提供一些实例来说明其发展历程及其带来的社会变革。接下来,我们将探讨目前尚处于早期阶段的新信息革命。这场革命很可能对我们的文化产生同样大规模的影响,尽管这些影响究竟是什么尚不得而知。

In this chapter we discuss these issues. First, we discuss the broad question of the relations between technology and social change, giving some case studies to make the process a bit more real. Then we discuss the traditional Industrial Revolution, providing some examples of how it progressed and the social change it brought about. We next turn to the new Information Revolution that is currently in its early stages. That revolution is likely to have similarly large-scale effects on our culture, although precisely what those effects will be is not yet known.

技术与社会变革

Technology and Social Change

技术是我们与环境互动的工具、手段和方法的集合。工具越好,我们就越不需要人力就能达到同样的效果。我们专门用一章来探讨技术,因为它是社会和文化变革中不可或缺的齿轮。

Technology is the universe of tools, means, and methods through which we interact with our environment. The better the tools, the less we need human activity to accomplish the same result. We devote a separate chapter to technology because it is an integral cog in social and cultural change.

科技的社会效应在我们周围随处可见。地理位置曾一度决定着我们的社会命运,如今已不再如此。朋友曾由住在我们附近的人决定,如今已不再如此。如今,朋友是我们社交网络中的成员,而由于科技的变革,社交网络可以扩展到世界各地。如今,我们发短信,却不再说话。我们在网上购物,而不是在本地商店购物。我们越来越多地在网上上课,而不是在特定的教室里上课。而现代科技的社交网络元素仅仅是个开始。二十年后,我们的大脑中很可能会出现能够直接与亲密朋友联系的植入物。何必浪费精力打电话呢?只需想到一个人,然后,你们就能进行交流。

The social effects of technology can be seen all around us. Geography used to define our social destiny; it no longer does. Friends used to be determined by who lived near us; they no longer are. Today, friends are the people we include in our social network, which, because of changes in technology, can extend throughout the world. Today, we text; we don’t talk. We shop online, not at our local stores. We attend more and more classes online, not in a specific room. And the social networking element of modern technology is only the beginning. In twenty years, there may well be implants with direct connections to our close friends embedded in our brains. Why waste effort calling—simply think of a person, and presto, you communicate.

随着人工智能(算法,即计算机程序,能够以与人类同等水平处理信息)和深度学习(能够发现通信中隐藏模式的计算机模式识别算法)的最新发展,我们可以预见未来几十年将发生巨大的社会变革。算法不仅会在国际象棋、围棋、《危险边缘》等游戏中胜过人类,它们还能胜任所有需要脑力劳动的工作,例如诊断病人的病情、驾驶、投资决策等等,而且比人类更经济、更高效。未来,繁重的脑力劳动将由人类辅助的计算机完成,而不是由计算机辅助人类。这些变化将对社会和文化产生深远的影响,我们将在本章后面讨论。

With recent developments in artificial intelligence—algorithms (computer programs) that process information at the same level that humans process information—and deep learning— computer pattern-finding algorithms that discover hidden patterns in communications, we can expect enormous social change in the coming decades. Algorithms will be doing not just games—Chess, Go, Jeopardy—better than humans, they will also do all types of jobs that require mental effort—diagnosing a patient with a sickness, driving, deciding what to invest in, the list goes on and on—more cheaply and efficiently than humans. In the future the heavy mental work will be done by computers assisted by humans rather than by humans assisted by computer. These changes have profound implications for society and culture as we will discuss later in the chapter.

思考未来变化的一个良好背景是回顾过去一些变化的历史。在第二章对文明史的简要概述中,我们了解了技术对社会和文化的重要性——城市最初建立,得益于农作物种植;人口扩张,克服了环境限制,得益于火的使用;以及我们对社会的思考方式的演变,得益于印刷术的发明。这种演变仍在继续。随着这种演变,它将改变我们的社会,为我们带来新的问题和新的视野。技术究竟将如何影响社会很难预测,但它肯定会影响社会。为了理解技术与社会变革之间的联系,让我们来思考一个小小的变化——罐装食品。

A good background for thinking about those future changes is to consider the history of some past changes. In our brief Chapter 2 overview of civilization’s history, we saw the importance of technology to society and culture—in the initial establishment of cities, made possible by crop cultivation; in the spread of population to overcome environmental limitation, through the use of fire; and in the evolution of our thinking about society, by means of printing. That evolution is continuing. And as it does it will change our society, presenting us with new problems and new horizons. Exactly how that technology will affect society is hard to predict, but it is certain that it will. To see the connection between technology and social change, let’s consider the story of one small change—the canning of food.

罐头食品的制作工艺是由一位富有进取心的法国人尼古拉斯·阿佩尔(Nicolas Appert)于1810年发明的。这项发明的灵感来自拿破仑·波拿巴。早在1800年,拿破仑皇帝就因缺乏补给而险些在马伦哥战役中败北,他意识到了食品保存的重要性。他意识到,可靠的食品保存方法将提升他的军事胜利几率。因此,拿破仑设立了一系列奖项,以奖励包括食品保存在内的技术进步,因为他认为法国在技术方面落后于其竞争对手英国。

The process of canning food was developed in 1810 by an enterprising Frenchman, Nicolas Appert. The stimulus for this invention came from Napoleon Bonaparte. As early as 1800, Emperor Napoleon recognized the importance of preserving food after nearly losing the Battle of Marengo because of a lack of provisions. The emperor realized that a reliable method of food preservation would enhance his chances of military success. Therefore, Napoleon offered a set of prizes for technological improvements, including food preservation, believing that France lagged behind its rival, Great Britain, in technology.

阿佩尔是一位厨师,曾在酒窖担任香槟装瓶工。当他听说获奖消息后,便开始研究一种保存食物的方法。多年之后,他才完善了自己的方法。凭借自己作为厨师和装瓶工的经验,阿佩尔萌生了一个想法:或许可以用香槟酒瓶来保存食物,只需将食物装入瓶中,密封后再煮沸即可。虽然他不知道瓶中食物为何不会变质(我们现在知道这是因为他对瓶中食物进行了消毒),但他还是成功了。很快,瓶装食品(以及后来的罐装食品)让人们在冬天也能吃到蔬菜,肉类也能长期保存。预期结果——改善军队的补给——得以实现,同时,食物保存也为公众健康带来了更广泛的益处。

When Appert, a cook who had worked in a wine cellar as a champagne bottler, heard about the prizes, he began work on a method to preserve food. It was many years before he perfected his process. Drawing on his experience as a cook and a bottler, Appert had an idea that he might be able to preserve food in champagne bottles by filling them with food, sealing them, and boiling the bottles. Although he did not know why the food in the bottles did not spoil (we now know it was because he had sterilized the contents of the bottles), still he was successful, and soon bottled food (and, later, canned food) allowed individuals to eat vegetables in winter and to preserve meat over long periods. The desired result—better provisioning of armies—was accomplished, along with the far more widespread benefits that preserved food meant for public health.

19世纪初,罐头食品非常重要,因为那时还没有机械冰箱。当时,冷藏食物的唯一方法是储存冰块。冰块通常在冬天从池塘里取来,然后存放在被称为“冰窖”的无窗建筑中,用干草隔热,直到下一个冬天。在美国,一些南部州常年从这些冰窖进口冰块。(可以想象,很多冰块都融化了,有一年在佛罗里达州阿巴拉契科拉,冰块价格涨到了每磅1.25美元——相当于今天的50美元。)

Canned food was important in the early 1800s because mechanical refrigerators did not exist. At that time, the only way to refrigerate food was by storing ice, which was cut from ponds in the winter and kept till the next winter, insulated by hay in windowless structures known as icehouses. In the United States, some southern states imported ice all year round from these icehouses. (As you can imagine, much of it melted, and one year in Apalachicola, Florida, the price rose to $1.25 per pound—about $50 in todays dollars.)

约翰·戈里是一位医生,他致力于解决当时在佛罗里达州肆虐的疟疾问题。他发现,疟疾在炎热潮湿的天气里更容易发病。他认为,如果能降低病房的温度,就能降低疟疾的发病率。起初,他用风扇对着冰块吹,但冰块短缺导致价格飙升,他决定一定有更好的办法。他注意到一些化学领域的新发现,特别是压缩气体在快速膨胀时会吸收周围环境的热量。他制造了一台蒸汽机,可以压缩气缸中的空气(一种气体)。当活塞回缩时,空气会逸出并膨胀到另一个气缸中。戈里将盐水溶液放在这个气缸周围,发现气缸会变冷,因为……圆筒内的空气很冷。通过将冷空气泵入病房,他发明了第一台空调。

John Gorrie, a doctor trying to solve the problem of malaria, which was rampant in Florida at the time, discovered that the disease occurred more frequently in hot, humid weather. He felt he could reduce its incidence if he could lower the temperature of his hospital wards. At first he did this by blowing fans over blocks of ice, but when an ice shortage pushed the price to high levels, he decided there must be a better way. He was aware of some recent discoveries in chemistry—specifically, that compressed gases, when expanding rapidly, will absorb heat from their surroundings. He constructed a steam engine that would compress air (a gas) in a cylinder. As the piston withdrew, it would allow the air to escape and expand into another cylinder. Gorrie put a brine solution around this cylinder and found that it would get cold because the air inside the cylinder was cold. By pumping this cold air into his hospital wards, he invented the first air conditioner.

罐头食品改变了人们的饮食。 © NoDerog/iStock

Canned food changed what people ate. © NoDerog/iStock

戈里还发现,将水放在盐水溶液周围,就能从水中吸收热量,使水结成冰。戈里意识到制冰机的巨大潜力,并试图将其推向市场,但却未能获得任何资金支持;他穷困潦倒地死去。在接下来的二十年里,人们努力完善这项发明,但收效甚微。然而,到了20世纪初,制冰工艺已经发展成熟,冰箱也成为了商业现实。

Gorrie also discovered that by placing water around the brine solution, he could draw heat from the water to such an extent that the water turned to ice. Gorrie realized the enormous possibilities of the ice-making machine and tried to market it but could not find any financial backing; he died a poor and broken man. For the next twenty years, people tried to perfect the invention, but with only moderate success. By the early 1900s, however, the process was sufficiently developed, and refrigerators became a commercial reality.

冰箱的社会效应也十分巨大。人们可以以更低的价格购买更多食物。他们不再需要频繁前往商店,这意味着社区提供的社交和商业联系更少。最终,冰箱在摧毁社区商店的基础,并用现代超市和现代广告取而代之的过程中发挥了重要作用,这两者都给城市、郊区和乡村社会带来了深刻的变化。制冷技术的变革仍在继续。热声冷却法(利用声波进行冷却)和磁场冷却法正在被探索,作为更高效、危害更小的制冷方法。

The social effects of refrigerators were also enormous. People could buy larger quantities of food at lower prices. They no longer had to make as many trips to the store, which meant that neighborhoods provided fewer social and commercial contacts. Eventually, refrigerators played an important role in destroying the basis for neighborhood stores and replacing them with the modern supermarket and modern advertising, both of which created profound changes in urban, suburban, and rural society. Changes in refrigeration technology are ongoing. Thermal acoustic methods of cooling—in which sound waves are used to do the cooling—and magnetic field cooling are being explored as more efficient and less harmful methods of achieving refrigeration.

我们讲述食品罐头工艺和冰箱发展的故事,并不是因为这些发明是独一无二的——我们可以选择许多其他例子——而是因为看到一个特定的例子可以让我们更好地感受到即使看似微小的技术发展也会对社会产生巨大而深远的影响。

We recount these stories of the development of the food canning process and of refrigerators not because these inventions are unique—we could have chosen numerous other examples—but because seeing a particular instance gives us a better sense of the tremendous and far-reaching influence that even seemingly minor technological developments can have on society.

工业革命

The Industrial Revolution

工业革命是指经济和社会组织发生的所有变革的总称,其特征是手工工具被动力机器取代,以及工业向大型企业集中。工业革命起源于1760年左右的英国。在那里,人们首次开始使用动力机器进行工业生产,并建造工厂来容纳这些机器。到1800年,这场运动取得了实质性进展。

The Industrial Revolution is the name given to the sum of all the changes in economic and social organization characterized by the replacement of hand tools with power-driven machines and by the concentration of industry in large establishments. It had its beginnings in Britain around 1760. There, for the first time, people began to employ power machines for industrial production and to build factories to house them. By 1800, this movement had made substantial progress.

英国工业革命是由一系列发明的积累所推动的。一个行业的一项新发明,会引发相关行业的改进和发明。十八世纪的纺织业发明就充分体现了这一点。这些发明最初应用于棉纺织业,当时该行业规模相对较小,发展较新,机器依靠水力驱动。当詹姆斯·瓦特发明出性能大幅提升的蒸汽机时,这场革命才真正开始。棉纺织机械经过改进,应用于毛织品的生产,毛织品的产量突飞猛进。成本和价格大幅下降,导致对羊毛和棉织品的需求大幅增长。

The British Industrial Revolution was brought about by an accumulation of inventions. A new invention in one industry was followed by improvements and inventions in related industries. This is well illustrated by the textile inventions of the eighteenth century. These inventions were first employed in the cotton goods industry, which was relatively small and new, and the machinery was operated by water power. When James Watt devised a greatly improved steam engine, the revolution really took off. Machinery for producing cotton textiles was modified and applied to the production of woolen cloth, the output of which expanded by leaps and bounds. Costs and prices were so reduced that a great new demand developed for both wool and cotton products.

上述发展使英国比竞争对手更具优势。由于英国能够比其他国家更快地实现工业机械化,多年来它一直是世界工厂。其生产、贸易和财富都达到了当时被视为高水平的水平。但随着时间的推移,工业化开始蔓延到其他国家。

The developments just described gave Britain an advantage over its competitors. Because Britain was able to mechanize its industries so much sooner than other countries, it was for many years the workshop of the world. Its production, trade, and wealth rose to what was then regarded as high levels. But in time industrialism began to spread to other nations.

美国工业主义的发展

The Development of Industrialism in the United States

十九世纪初,美国的机器工业和工厂制度开始发展。拿破仑战争(1803-1815)和1812年战争极大地推动了美国的工业化,因为它们使美国难以进口英国纺织品。为了弥补由此造成的短缺,美国建立了许多新的纺织工厂。雇主不得不支付比英国工厂同行更高的工资,但只要英国纺织品供应不足,他们就能盈利。和平时期随着技术传入欧洲,贸易恢复正常,许多新工厂被迫关闭。但也有一些工厂幸存了下来,从那时起,美国逐渐走向工业化。

In the early nineteenth century, the machine industry and factory system began to develop in the United States. The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) and the War of 1812 gave US industrialization a strong push because they made it difficult for the United States to import British textiles. To make up for the resulting shortage, many new textile factories were established in this country. Employers had to pay higher wages than their counterparts in the British factories, but as long as British textiles were not available, they could operate profitably. When peace came to Europe and normal trade was reestablished, many of these new factories were forced to close down. Others, however, survived, and from that time on the United States gradually became more and more industrialized.

十九世纪棉纺厂内部。 © Classic Image/Alamy Stock Photo

The interior of a nineteenth-century cotton factory. © Classic Image/Alamy Stock Photo

在某些方面,美国的条件有利于工业化。首先,我们的国内市场正在快速增长。其次,原材料充足。第三,劳动力相对稀缺,工资高于欧洲,部分原因是工人们不断离开工作岗位,前往边境免费或廉价的土地定居。虽然这提高了生产成本,但也使得引进节省劳动力的机器成为优先事项。为了降低成本,尽可能多的操作被转移到动力机器上。结果,产量的增长速度远远超过了工人数量的增长速度,生活水平逐渐提高,财富开始积累。

In some respects, conditions in the United States favored industrialization. First, our domestic market was rapidly growing. Second, raw materials were plentiful. Third, labor was relatively scarce and wages were higher than in Europe, partly because workers kept leaving their jobs to settle on free or cheap land along the frontier. Although this raised costs of production, it also put a premium on the introduction of labor-saving machines. To reduce costs, as many operations as possible were shifted to power machines. As a result, production increased much faster than the number of workers, standards of living gradually rose, and wealth began to accumulate.

标准化、互换性和大规模生产

Standardization, Interchangeability, and Mass Production

以我们的标准来看,早期的机器十分粗糙。由于零件配合不完美,运转时噪音大、咔哒作响,而且经常发生故障。它们生产的产品往往不完美,因此必须手工进行进一步的加工才能达到合格标准。工业技术的一大进步是精密机器的逐渐发展,这些机器不仅运转平稳,还能生产出标准化、制造精确、可互换的零件,用于制造或多或少复杂的成品,例如手表、枪支、洗衣机和汽车。这种发展使得一台机器能够生产数千个相同零件,而且这些零件几乎完全相同,可以自由替换。标准化——生产统一、可替换的零件——得益于一项不起眼却影响深远的发展——测量设备的改进。类似的小改进在塑造我们的社会方面发挥了巨大的作用,因此值得详细描述一下,让您了解技术发展的平凡一面。

Early machines were crude by our standards. Because their parts did not fit together perfectly, they ran with a great deal of noise and clatter and frequently broke down. Often their products were imperfect, so that further work had to be done on them by hand to make them acceptable. One of the greater advances in industrial technology was the gradual development of precision machines that would run smoothly and that could also turn out standardized, accurately made, and hence interchangeable parts for more or less complex finished products such as watches, guns, washing machines, and automobiles. This development made it physically possible for a machine to produce thousands of units of a given part, all so nearly alike that they could be freely substituted for one another. Standardization—the production of uniform, substitutable parts—was made possible by a humble but far-reaching development, the improvement of measurement devices. Similar small improvements have played large roles in shaping our society, so it is worth describing this one in detail to give you a sense of the mundane aspect of technological development.

要理解标准化的问题,不妨想象一下汽车。如果活塞坏了,你就得去买一个新的。买一个新的活塞并不便宜,但比请机械师根据你的发动机制造一个新的活塞要便宜得多。后者可能要花二三十倍的价钱。将这个比喻扩展到其他领域,我们今天使用的许多机器——例如洗碗机、拖拉机和复印机——都依赖于互换性,即用一个零件替换另一个零件的能力。如果没有互换性,我们拥有的商品数量将远远少于现在,而现有的商品价格也会更高。

To understand the problem of standardization, think of a car. If you blow a piston, you go out and buy a new one. Getting the new piston is not cheap, but it is a lot cheaper than if you had to have a machinist make a new piston to fit your individual engine. It would probably cost twenty or thirty times as much. Extending this analogy to other areas, much of the machinery—for example, dishwashers, tractors, and photocopiers—we use today relies on interchangeability, the ability to substitute one part for another. Without it, there would be far fewer goods than we now have, and those that we do have would be more expensive.

互换性的重要性显而易见。但如果互换性有如此多的优势,为什么早期的机器没有采用可互换的零件制造呢?原因在于技术:为了实现机器的互换性,公差(尺寸和形状的变化)必须小于千分之一英寸。在18世纪和19世纪初,即使是最优秀、最熟练的机械师也无法达到这样的公差,因此,在找到实现这些公差的方法之前,互换性只是一个梦想。

So interchangeability is important; that’s obvious. But if it is obvious that interchangeability has so many advantages, why weren’t early machines built with interchangeable parts? The reason is a technical one: To achieve interchangeability in machines, tolerances (variations in size and shape) must be less than one-thousandth of an inch. With the tools available in the 1700s and early 1800s, even the best, most skilled machinist could not approach such tolerances, so interchangeability was only a dream until some method of achieving those tolerances could be found.

正如许多发明一样,标准化的最强大推动力来自军队。在南北战争(1861-1865 年)之前和期间,每支步枪都必须单独生产。如果一支步枪损坏,就需要熟练的机械师或枪匠来修理。这些工匠会使用各种工具,打造一支火枪,甚至是一支步枪。每支火枪都必须精确制造;也就是说,所有部件,例如枪托、枪管和枪机,都必须配合在一起,作为一个协调的整体工作(因此有“枪机、枪托和枪管”的说法)。但精确并不意味着可互换。枪匠会加工各个部件,直到它们配合在一起,但当他修改每个部件以适应其他部件时,他就使该部件特定于该武器;该部件不能用于其他武器。为了修理步枪,军队必须有自己的火枪制造师,专门修理在战场上损坏的火枪。军队还会设立军械库,用于制造个人武器,军械库是任何国家防御能力的重要组成部分。1

As has happened with many inventions, the strongest impetus for standardization came from the armed forces. Before and during the Civil War (1861-1865), each rifle had to be produced separately. If one broke, a skilled machinist or gunsmith was needed to repair it. These craftsmen, using a variety of tools, would fashion a musket or even a rifle. Each musket had to be built precisely; that is, all the parts, such as the stock, barrel, and lock, had to fit together and work as a coordinated whole (hence the phrase, “lock, stock, and barrel”). But precision did not mean interchangeability. A gunsmith would work the individual components until they fitted together, but as he modified each part to fit the others, he made it specific to that weapon; the part worked in no other. To repair rifles, armies had to have their own musket makers who would fix individual muskets that had broken in the field. Armies would also keep armories, where they made individual weapons, and armories were an important part of the defense capacity of any country.1

大约在1820年,一位技艺精湛的火枪制造师约翰·霍尔(John Hall)认为,这种做法效率低下,如果火枪拥有可互换的零件,军队将拥有巨大的优势。军队只需携带备用零件,即可轻松修理损坏的武器。这不仅更便宜,而且效率更高。正如我们之前所述,可互换零件的技术要求非常高,因为如果所有零件都能互换,那么每支火枪都必须精确装配,并且彼此完全相同,而两个人各自生产一整支火枪是无法实现的。

In about 1820, one of the skilled musket makers, John Hall, argued that this procedure was inefficient and that armies would have a tremendous advantage if their muskets had interchangeable parts. An army would only have to carry spare parts, which could easily be used to repair a broken weapon. It would not only be cheaper, but it would also be far more efficient. As we stated earlier, technological requirements for interchangeable parts were enormous because, if all parts were to be interchangeable, each musket had to fit together precisely and be identical to every other in a way that two individuals each producing an entire musket could not accomplish.

为了解决这个问题,霍尔开发了一种精密机械生产方法。精密机械生产的发展需要一系列虽小却极其重要的技术突破,包括采用标准图样而非逐个零件进行测量,以及开发用于比较和测试各个零件的模具。凭借这些技术进步,机器能够达到互换性所需的精度和一致性水平,这一水平甚至远超最熟练的工人所能达到的水平。

To meet the problem, Hall developed a method of precision machine production. The movement to precision machine production required a number of small but extremely important technological breakthroughs, which included measuring from a standard pattern rather than from each piece and the development of dies by which individual parts were compared and tested. With these developments, machines could reach a level of precision and consistency necessary for interchangeability, a level much higher than even the most skilled worker could achieve.

机械师无需测量每个零件,只需制造一个初始零件或模具,然后用配备千分尺的机器制作一个复制件,其流程类似于如今五金店复制钥匙的流程。机器会追踪原始零件,并根据其形状制作新零件。通过这一流程,每个零件都足够相同,从而实现互换。当然,零件之间会存在一些细微的差异,但熟练的机械师可以通过制造每个零件并用千分尺测量其相对于原始零件的尺寸,将各个零件之间的差异保持在可接受的范围内,以实现互换性。

Rather than a machinist measuring each part, a machinist could make an initial part, or die, and then a machine employing a micrometer could produce a duplicate, using a process similar to the one hardware stores use today to duplicate keys. The machine traces the original and fashions the new part to conform. By means of this process, each part is sufficiently identical so that interchangeability is possible. There are, of course, some minute variations, but by making each part and measuring it relative to the original with a micrometer, a skilled machinist can keep the variations between the individual pieces at an acceptable level for interchangeability.

互换性的社会和经济影响

Social and Economic Effects of Interchangeability

互换性技术引入后,生产流程迅速改变,工业革命的步伐也随之加快。20世纪初,亨利·福特通过引入流水线技术,进一步推动了这一发展。在这种生产技术中,工厂中的每个工人在流水线上对一件产品进行单一操作。由于这项创新,20世纪20年代,汽车的价格从大约1600美元降至300美元。

Once interchangeability was introduced, the production process quickly changed and the pace of the Industrial Revolution quickened. In the early 1900s, Henry Ford carried through this development with the introduction of the assembly line, a production technique in which each worker in a factory performs a single operation on an item as it is passed along. Because of this innovation, the price of a car was lowered in the 1920s from about $1,600 to $300.

有了标准化和机器生产,当一台机器生产一个零件时,其他机器也可以生产其他零件。通过流水线,只需组装合适的零件,就能生产出大量的成品。因此,标准化导致了大​​规模生产,即在流水线上使用标准化零件来制造大量产品。

With standardization and machine production, while one machine was making one part, other machines could be making other parts, and by using an assembly line great quantities of the finished product could be turned out by merely assembling the proper parts. Thus standardization led to mass production, the use of standardized parts to construct great quantities of a product on an assembly line.

© www.cartoonstock.com

© www.cartoonstock.com

当然,如果产品卖不出去,大量生产就得不偿失。但当市场足够大时,使用标准互换零件可以实现大规模生产,并大幅降低成本。如果一台机器只能生产少量产品,那么制造一台昂贵的机器来生产标准化零件就毫无价值,因为这少量产品的销售额必须覆盖机器的全部成本。但如果可以大规模生产,并且一台机器可以用来生产数千或数十万个产品,那么每个产品的成本占比就会变得很小,甚至可以忽略不计。因此,只要有机器可以完成必要的操作,用机器代替人力就是值得的。当机器制造的标准化零件在现代装配线上组装成成品时,例如在汽车工业中,大规模生产就能达到很高的效率。

Naturally, it does not pay to make large amounts of a product if that product cannot be sold. But when the market is large enough, the use of standard interchangeable parts makes mass production possible and substantially reduces costs. To construct an expensive machine to make a standardized part would not pay if the machine could be used to produce only a few units of output, because the sale of these few units would have to cover the entire cost of the machine. But if mass production is possible and a machine can be employed to produce thousands or hundreds of thousands of units, the portion of the cost that must be charged to each unit becomes small or even negligible. It then pays to use a machine in place of human labor whenever one can be devised to perform a necessary operation. When standardized parts made by machines are combined into a finished product on a modern assembly line, as in the automobile industry, mass production reaches a high level of efficiency.

互换性和大规模生产对社会的影响是巨大的。个体技术工人不再受到高度尊重;他们的工资下降,社会地位下降,生产商品所需的技能水平也随之下降。因此,他们领导了反对使用新机器的运动。随着技术工人地位的下降,机器拥有者的地位上升。工业家们积累了大量财富,上流社会不得不为这些新富阶层腾出空间。商业提供了一条通往社会阶梯的途径,而随着商人地位的上升,他们也带来了自己的价值观和世界观。军队和武器的成本下降了,战争和杀戮却增加了。

The effects on society of interchangeability and mass production were enormous. Individual skilled workers were no longer held in high esteem; their pay fell, their social position fell, and the skill level necessary to produce goods fell. In response, they led movements against the use of new machines. As the status of skilled workers fell, the status of the owners of machines rose. Fortunes were built by industrialists, and high society had to make room for these newly rich. Business provided a way to move up the social ladder, and as businesspeople moved up, they brought their own values and worldview. Armies and arms became less costly; war and killing increased.

随着可互换零件生产方式的普及,这些影响成倍增加。随着廉价汽车的发展,地理因素对社会的限制发生了变化,城市的性质也发生了变化。廉价拖拉机提高了农业生产力,降低了食品价格,迫使越来越多的人离开农场。如果霍尔或其他人没有找到更精确的机床制造方法,这些变化就不会发生得这么早。

As the interchangeable-parts approach to production spread, these effects were multiplied. With the development of low-priced cars, the limitations geography placed on society changed, and the nature of cities changed. Low-priced tractors increased productivity in farming, lowering food prices and forcing more and more people off the farms. None of these changes would have occurred as early as they did if Hall, or someone else, had not figured out a way to machine-tool more exactly.

技术进步的文化和社会基础

The Cultural and Social Basis for Technological Progress

刚才讨论的历史案例,或许能让你大致了解技术变革对文化的影响。但文化在技术发展中也扮演着重要的角色,因此这种联系是相互的,而非单向的。例如,由于新技术发展带来的广泛社会变革,即使技术发展是可能的,也可能永远不会实现。技术进步只有在社会条件鼓励的情况下才会发生。

The historical examples just discussed provide you with some sense of the effects of technical change on culture. But culture also plays an important role in technology So the connection is reciprocal, not unidirectional. For example, because of the extensive social changes new technological developments involve, technological developments may never come about, even though they are possible. Technological progress occurs only as long as social conditions encourage it.

从长远来看,许多因素可能会极大地减缓我们的技术进步。开发新技术所需的研究和设备成本可能会受到许多企业的抵制,如果政府直接参与其中,许多纳税人也会抵制。技术进步也往往会受到有组织的压力团体的阻碍,这些团体为了维持产品的需求和价格,会限制某些产品的产量,并反对引入新的生产方法或产品。例如,工会经常反对引入可能减少其成员就业机会的生产方法或材料;建筑材料生产商有时会试图阻止其产品的替代品的引入,即使这些替代品可能更好、更便宜,并且可能使用更丰富的材料。同样,现有的出租车司机反对优步,因为它损害了他们的生计;农民则要求政府采取措施减少农产品产量,以提高农产品价格和收入。随着教学机器的开发,我们可以预期,现有的教师将努力确保自己不被取代。一个可能减缓技术变革的更微妙的影响因素是社会对变革的接受度降低。这不仅可能源于人们对消费更多商品缺乏兴趣,也可能源于人们对改善商品质量和环境质量漠不关心;也可能源于冒险精神的逐渐淡化,以及对变革潜在有害影响的日益重视。变革往往看起来危险而令人不安。它使一些人失业,并迫使他们寻找自己并不喜欢的职业。它导致一些企业倒闭,即使其他企业可能正在迅速扩张。一个将全部重点放在稳定和安全上的社会不太可能青睐重大的技术创新。

Many factors might, in the long run, greatly slow our technological progress. The costs of the research and equipment necessary for developing new technologies are likely to be resisted by many corporations and also, where government is directly involved, by many taxpayers. Technological progress also tends to be slowed by organized pressure groups that have an interest in limiting the output of certain products and in opposing the introduction of new methods or products in order to maintain the demand and the prices for the things they sell. For example, labor unions often oppose the introduction of methods or materials that might reduce the jobs available to their members, and producers of building materials sometimes seek to discourage the introduction of substitutes for their products, even though these may be better and cheaper and may use materials that are more plentiful. Similarly, existing taxi drivers oppose Uber because it undermines their livelihood, and farmers demand that the government take measures to reduce farm output in order to raise farm prices and incomes. As teaching machines are developed, we can expect that existing teachers will work to see that they are not replaced. A more subtle influence that might slow up technological change would be a less receptive attitude of society toward change. This might result not only from a lack of interest in consuming more goods but also from a feeling of indifference toward improving both the quality of goods and the quality of the environment; or it might result from a gradual dilution of the spirit of adventure and from an increasing emphasis on the potential harmful effects of change. Change often seems dangerous and disturbing. It puts some people out of jobs and forces them to seek types of employment not to their liking. It causes some business enterprises to fail, even though others may be expanding rapidly. A society that puts its whole emphasis on stability and security is not likely to look with favor on major technological innovations.

全球化的技术基础

The Technological Foundation of Globalization

促进技术发展的政治力量之一是贸易开放和经济全球化。原因在于,技术发展通常与专业化分工和贸易增长息息相关;贸易使经历技术变革的个人和公司能够通过这一过程(即“边学边做”),提升自身能力。随着公司不断学习,他们可以以更低的成本生产更多产品。此外,贸易使公司能够利用规模经济——公司生产设施越大,其单位产品成本就越低。例如,制造一辆汽车的成本极其高昂;而制造多辆汽车,每辆汽车的成本则要低得多。

One of the political forces that has encouraged the development of technology has been the openness to trade and globalization of the economy. The reason is that the development of technology is generally associated with specialization and increased trade; trade allows individuals and companies experiencing a technological change to become better at what they do, in a process called learning by doing. As companies learn, they can produce more products at lower cost. Additionally, trade allows companies to take advantage of economies of scale— the bigger a firm’s production facilities, the lower its per-unit costs of the good. For example, making one car is extremely expensive; making many cars has a much lower per-car cost.

如果一家公司能够以更低的成本生产某种产品,它就能在竞争中胜过其他公司,从而获得巨额利润。有了这些利润,它就可以在研发上投入更多资金,并获得更大的市场份额,前提是其他公司无法迅速复制该技术。全球化——世界经济的一体化——加快了技术变革的速度。全球化传播了技术变革,并创造了强大的激励机制来引入更多变革,因为它创造了一个更大的市场,让公司能够从技术发展中获益。

If a company can produce something more cheaply, it can out-compete other firms and hence make enormous profits. With those profits, it can spend more on research and development and gain even more of the market, as long as other firms cannot duplicate that technology quickly. Globalization—the integration of world economies—increases the speed of technological change. Globalization spreads technological change and creates strong incentives to introduce more change, since it creates a much bigger market within which a company can gain from a technological development.

近年来,全球化发展迅猛。它既促进了技术变革,也受其推动。技术发展使企业能够以低成本在全球范围内进行通信和运输。近年来,美国大量制造业活动转移到印度和中国等国家,对这些国家的经济和文化产生了深远的影响。这不仅使这些国家物质条件改善,也带来了巨大的收入不平等和文化的西化,许多人认为这是一种损失。对美国而言,这加剧了收入不平等,降低了那些原本可以把工作岗位转移到海外的人的工资,同时提高了那些引进新技术的人的工资。

Globalization has been occurring at a fast rate in recent years. It has both encouraged technological change and been spurred on by it. Technological development has allowed companies to communicate cheaply over the entire world and ship goods cheaply as well. In recent years, enormous amounts of manufacturing activity in the United States were transferred to countries such as India and China, with profound effects on their economies and culture. It has made them better off materially, but has also introduced large income inequalities and westernization of their culture, which many people consider a loss. For the United States it has exacerbated income inequalities, lowering the pay of those whose jobs could be sent abroad, and increasing the pay for those who introduced the new technologies.

重温技术与社会变革

Technology and Social Change Revisited

从我们对工业革命的讨论中可以看出,技术在塑造社会文化方面发挥着重要作用。技术变革极大地提高了生活水平,但也带来了社会问题。早期工厂的工作使人们整天远离家园,扰乱了既定的家庭生活模式。一方面,它迫使大量人口居住在新的工作地点附近,从而导致了工业城镇的拥挤。另一方面,有证据表明,即使是早期的工厂也为大众提供了更多的赚钱机会和更好的生存机会。随着时间的推移,死亡率下降,人口增长率上升,就是明证。

As you can see from our discussion of the Industrial Revolution, technology plays an important role in determining a society’s culture. Changing technology allows enormous increases in living standards but it also creates social problems. Work in the first factories took people away from their homes all day and disrupted the established pattern of domestic life. On the one hand it forced large numbers of people to live close to their new places of work, which in turn resulted in crowded industrial towns and cities. On the other hand, there is evidence that even the early factories gave the masses more opportunities to earn and a better chance of survival. Indications of this are the fall in the death rate and the increase in the rate of population growth that have occurred over time.

技术对社会的影响如此广泛,以至于一些社会科学家声称技术是社会和文化关系的主要决定因素。这些社会科学家认为,大规模生产和流水线(每个人重复做同一项任务)的发展并非因为它们在技术上更高效(因为可以从一定量的劳动中获得更多产出),而是因为它们建立并强化了社会分工。例如,假设一台机器可以生产两种部件。其中一种需要每种部件一种是让个人在无人监督的情况下自行完成部件的某个部分;另一种则需要主管指导个人执行特定任务。即使第一种机器提供了一种更便宜的生产部件的方法,但如果将决定权交给主管,主管也不太可能选择那种省去主管工作的机器。

The effects of technology on society are so pervasive that some social scientists claim that technology is the primary determinant of social and cultural relations. These social scientists argue that mass production and the assembly line, where each individual does one task repeatedly, developed not because they were more technically efficient, inasmuch as you can get more output from a certain amount of work, but because they established and fortified social divisions. For example, suppose two kinds of a machine can produce widgets. One requires each individual to work on a part of the widget with no one supervising; the other requires a supervisor directing individuals to perform specific tasks. Even if the first kind of machine provides a cheaper way to produce a widget, if the decision were left to the supervisor, he or she would be highly unlikely to choose the one that eliminated the supervisor’s job.

信息革命以电子元件的小型化为基础,将图中所示的复杂而杂乱的连接压缩到千分之一英寸的芯片中。 © blickwinkel/Alamy Stock Photo

The information revolution has been based on miniaturization of electronic components, allowing the compression of complex and messy connections such as seen here into a thousandth of an inch chip. © blickwinkel/Alamy Stock Photo

采用这种推理方式的社会科学家认为,资本主义的社会阶级结构是资本主义生产方式的必然产物。他们认为,即使是理论上试图避免阶级分化的共产主义国家,也仍然维持着资本主义社会的阶级分化,而且只要它们继续使用资本主义技术和资本主义生产方式,这种分化就将继续存在。当一项技术是为老板和工人设计的时,

Social scientists who use this line of reasoning argue that the social class structure of capitalism is inevitable with the capitalist means of production. They argue that even communist countries, which in theory attempted to avoid class divisions, nevertheless maintained the class divisions of capitalist society and they will maintain it as long as they continue to use capitalist technology and capitalist modes of production. When a technology is designed for a boss and a

工人,除非这些划分得以维持,否则技术就无法有效发挥作用。根据这些社会科学家的说法,共产主义之所以自我毁灭,是因为它没有发展自己的技术。只有开发一种替代技术,一种不​​以压制工人为目的的技术,任何社会才能摆脱阶级结构的束缚。

worker, unless these divisions are maintained, the technology cannot be effective. According to these social scientists, communism self-destructed because it did not develop its own technology. Only by developing an alternative technology, one not designed to hold workers down, can any society divest itself of class structure.

这一论点饱受批评,但事实是,资本主义技术不可避免地导致资本主义国家发展出阶级制度。(但前资本主义国家和非资本主义国家也同样发展出了阶级结构。)对这种技术影响的担忧最初阻碍了中国鼓励西方技术的发展。在20世纪60年代毛泽东领导的文化大革命的大部分时间以及70年代的相当长一段时间里,中国试图清除许多西方技术。然而,在20世纪70年代末80年代初新的领导班子领导下,中国改变了立场,开始有意识地将西方技术引入其体系,旨在推动经济发展。然而,这场争论仍在继续,尤其是考虑到前社会主义社会近年来的增长呈现出不平等加剧的现象。

This argument is subject to much criticism, but the fact remains that capitalist technologies have inevitably led to capitalist countries developing a class system. (But so too have precapitalist and noncapitalist countries developed a class structure as well.) Concern about this effect of technology initially kept China from encouraging Western technology. Through much of Mao Zedongs Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and well into the 1970s, China attempted to purge many of those Western technologies. However, under new leadership in the late 1970s and early 1980s, China reversed its position and began the conscious introduction of Western technology into its system, with the intention of pushing economic development. The debate, however, continues, especially because the recent growth in formerly socialist societies has been marked by increasing inequality.

技术、收入分配和就业

Technology, Income Distribution, and Jobs

人们普遍认为,新技术的发展会摧毁就业岗位,造成失业。从具体就业岗位来看,这显然是正确的——技术确实会取代特定的工作岗位。例如,十八世纪英国引入动力织布机后,布料价格大幅下跌,以至于熟练的手工织布工无法再靠本行业谋生——他们失去了工作。但从总体来看,这种说法并不正确,或者至少在过去并非如此。美国的就业岗位数量每年都在大幅增加,大致与求职人口的增长速度保持一致。因此,尽管技术得到了巨大的发展,但就业率也大幅增长。这段历史表明,新技术的引入会在不同领域创造新的就业岗位,并取代旧的就业岗位。

A widely held belief is that new technological developments destroy jobs and create unemployment. On an individual job level that is obviously true—technology eliminates specific jobs. For example, after the introduction of the power loom in Britain in the eighteenth century, the price of cloth dropped so sharply that skilled hand weavers could no longer make a living at their trade—they lost their job. On the aggregate level, the argument is not true, or at least it has not been true in the past. The number of jobs in the US has been increasing significantly each year, roughly keeping pace with the increase in population looking for jobs. So even though technology has increased enormously, employment has also increased enormously. What this history suggests that when new technologies are introduced, new jobs in different areas are created and they replace the old jobs.

关于技术对就业的影响,一个更有说服力的论点并非涉及就业总量,而是涉及就业的分配以及与这些就业相关的收入。技术改变了人们可获得的工作分配,从而改变了收入分配。例如,工业革命降低了熟练工匠的收入,因为机器能够更快、更便宜地完成他们的工作。它使大量非熟练工人的收入有所提高,虽然幅度不大,但绝对可以察觉,也提高了少数大量引进新技术的企业家的收入。平均而言,其结果是社会收入更加平等。由于它提高了大部分从事繁重工作、长时间工作的人口的生活水平,大多数观察家认为这种重新分配是一个好的结果。

A more supportable argument about the effect of technology on jobs involves not the total number of jobs, but the distribution of jobs and the income associated with those jobs. Technology changes the distribution of jobs available to people and hence the distribution of income. For example, the Industrial Revolution lowered income of skilled craftspeople since machines could do what they did faster and cheaper. It raised the income of a large number of unskilled workers by a small, but definitely perceptible amount, and the income of a small number of entrepreneurs who introduced the new technology a lot. On average the result was that income in society was made more equal. Since it raised the standard of living of the large proportion of the population, whose work was heavy and hours long, most observers saw this redistribution as a good outcome.

但技术并非总能使收入分配更加平等。它也可能使其不那么平等,尤其是在像美国这样的特定国家。例如,近年来,新技术在加剧美国国内收入不平等方面发挥了重要作用。技术使全球化变得更加容易,并将大量收入输送到少数人手中。这些人要么是技术的先驱,因此拥有经济学家所说的先发优势;要么是获得了专利和其他法律保护,从而阻止他人与他们竞争,因此不必被迫降低价格和收入。如果没有专利,他们就必须这样做。

But technology doesn’t always make income distribution more equal. It can also make it less equal, especially within a particular country such as the United States. For example, more recently, new technologies have played an important role in increasing income inequality within the United States. By making globalization much easier, technology has channeled large amounts of income to a small number of people who were either first in developing the technology, and thus have what economist call first mover advantage, or who have acquired patents and other legal protections that prevent others from competing with them, and therefore not forcing them to lower their prices, and income, which they would have had to do if they didn’t have the patents.

© DanielVilleneuve/iStock

© DanielVilleneuve/iStock

为了更清楚地说明这一点,我们来考虑一个极端的例子。假设一项新技术取代了一项旧技术,因为它的效率提高了30%,而且一个人拥有这项技术的专利,所以除非付费给他,否则其他人都无法使用该技术。仅从可能生产的总产出来看,社会状况会更好。有更多的产出可供分配。但社会会变得更好吗?停止?比如说,在旧技术下,收入分配相对平等,社会也因此稳定。而新技术掌握在个人手中,收入分配将高度不平等。因此,虽然总产出有所增加,但它并没有像许多人希望的那样在社会中分配。我们是否认为新技术对社会有益,取决于我们对平等的重视程度;如果我们重视平等,则取决于社会能否轻易找到一种方法,将资金从受益者转移到受损者。在当今社会,我们缺乏有效的方法来做到这一点,因此新技术正在引发社会和政治问题。

Let’s consider an extreme case to make the argument clear. Say that a new technology replaces an old technology because it is 30 percent more efficient, and that one person has a patent on that technology so no one else can use it unless they pay him to do so. Judged only by the total output that it is possible to produce society is better off. There is more output to go around. But is society better off? Say, for example, that under the old technology there was a relatively equal distribution of income and that we had social stability because of it. With the new technology controlled by the single person, the income distribution will be highly unequal. So while there is more total output, it is not spread out throughout society in the way that many would like it to be spread out. Whether we consider the new technology a gain to society depends on how much we value equality and, if we do value equality, on how easy it is for society to figure out a way to transfer money from the one person who gained to others who lost. In our current society we don’t have good ways of doing that, and thus new technologies are creating social and political problems.

正如我们稍后将讨论的,近期的技术变革正趋于削弱收入分配的均等性。鉴于我们当前的制度结构,新技术为少数身处信息革命底层的人以及那些接受过信息处理培训并拥有高级职位的人提供了巨额收入,同时削弱了现代技工——专业人士——的收入。如此一来,它正在对我们社会的稳定构成压力——而这种社会稳定建立在这样一种信念之上:只要你努力工作,就能获得足够的收入,过上与父母同等甚至更高的生活水平。

As we will discuss later, recent technological changes are tending to make the income distribution less equal. Given our current institutional structure, the new technology is providing enormous income for a few who are in at the ground floor of the Information Revolution and for those who are trained in information processing and have high-level jobs, while undermining the income of the modern version of skilled artisans—professionals. In doing so, it is putting pressure on the social stability of our society—a social stability built on the belief that, if you work hard, you will receive an income adequate to have a lifestyle that meets or exceeds that of your parents.

社会正在以各种方式应对收入分配和就业问题。推动提高最低工资标准是其中一种方式。但这种推动虽然可能暂时有所帮助,但可能会进一步加剧问题,因为它会鼓励更多半技术工作被计算机和智能技术取代。社会应对的另一种方式是政府以补贴和收入项目的形式为中低收入工人提供越来越多的支持。社会保障、食品券、医疗保险和补贴医疗保险就是例子。但这种政府支持也存在问题。作为人类的乐趣之一就是独立自主地做事,解决问题。靠父母或政府的救济金生活并不能提供这些乐趣,并且不可避免地会导致提供资金的人也想要控制。此外,这些政府项目需要大幅增加税收——而这正是社会一直不愿做的事情。

Society is responding to the income distribution and jobs problems in a variety of ways. The push for a higher minimum wage is one way. But that push, while it might temporarily help, will likely further exacerbate the problem by encouraging even more replacement of semi-skilled jobs by computers and smart technology. Another way society is responding is by the government providing more and more support for lower- and middle-class workers in the form of subsidies and programs that provide them with income. Social security, food stamps, Medicare, and subsidized medical care insurance are examples. But that government support has problems as well. One of the pleasures of being human is doing things on one’s own, solving problems. Living off a dole from parents, or the government, doesn’t provide those pleasures, and inevitably results in whoever is doing the funding to also want to control. Moreover, those government programs require increasing taxes significantly—something society has not been willing to do.

解决技术变革造成的收入分配不均的一个更根本的方法是减少对专利、商标和版权等知识产权的法律支持。这些权利可以防止没有这些权利的人与那些率先进入市场的人竞争。取消专利和版权,或者至少缩短其有效期,将创造更多竞争,降低价格,使新技术带来的收益惠及更广泛的人群。

A more fundamental way of dealing with the unequal income distribution caused by technological change would involve providing less legal support for the intellectual property rights such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights. These rights prevent others without those rights from competing with those who managed to get into the market first. Eliminating, or at least reducing the length of patents and copyrights, would create more competition and lower prices, spreading the benefits of gains from new technologies to a wider group of people.

反对者正确地指出,这样的变化可能会减缓变革的步伐。支持者则认为,这只会略微减缓变革的步伐,而且更广泛地惠及民众将有助于避免重大的社会冲突。他们认为,社会政策的目标不应该是生产尽可能多的“物质”。其目标是设计一个制度体系,让尽可能多的人能够拥有最充实、最有意义的人生,这样当人们生命走到尽头时,他们就能回首往事,说,那是一段美好的人生。实现这种充实的人生往往需要我们自己克服逆境,这意味着,如果逆境被消除,就必须以其他方式将其重新加回来。关于这些问题的争论仍在继续,预计在未来几十年还会持续下去。

Opponents of this idea rightly point out that such changes might slow the pace of change. Supporters argue that it would only slightly slow that pace, and that spreading the benefits more widely would help avoid major social conflict. They argue that the goal of social policy should not be to produce as much “stuff” as possible. The goal is to design an institutional system in which the greatest number of individuals can have the most fulfilling and meaningful lives, so that at the end of people’s lives they can look back and say, that was a life well lived. Achieving such a fulfilling life often includes overcoming adversity on our own, which means that if the adversity is removed, one has to add it back in some other way. Debates about these issues are ongoing, and can be expected to continue into the coming decades.

自然资源、经济和技术

Natural Resources, Economics, and Technology

技术变革的另一个影响是对生态系统的影响。社会科学家经常讨论的一个问题是,是否有足够的资源支持社会持续发展,以及我们是否会在某一天达到增长的极限。这与我们在此的讨论息息相关,因为技术在资源和经济之间提供了必要的联系。要理解这种联系,我们需要考虑经济活动、自然资源和技术的本质。

Another effect of technological change is on the ecosystem, and one of the debates that often surfaces among social scientists concerns whether there are sufficient resources for society to continue to grow, and whether we will someday reach a limit to growth. It is relevant to our discussion here because technology provides a necessary link between resources and the economy. To see this link, we need to consider the nature of economic activities, natural resources, and technology.

经济活动是指那些与谋生有关的活动,它们必然在每种文化中都扮演着重要的角色。其特征主要由三个因素决定。首先,所有人类都对多种稀缺商品有需求。稀缺商品是指数量有限,只有我们生产它们或提供有价值的东西来交换才能获得的商品。满足特定需求的愿望是许多经济活动背后的动机。社会满足这些需求的能力取决于……

Economic activities are those activities concerned with making a living, and they necessarily play a major role in every culture. Their character is largely determined by three factors. First, all human beings have wants for many kinds of scarce goods. Scarce goods are goods that exist in limited quantities and that we can obtain only if we produce them or if we offer something valuable in exchange for them. The desire to satisfy specific wants is the motive behind much economic activity. Society’s ability to meet those wants depends on what

资源是可用的。食物、衣服、住房和武器等经济商品不可能凭空创造。鉴于现有技术,如果人们想要拥有商品,就必须在自然界中找到生产这些商品的原材料——自然资源——然后加工这些原材料。

resources are available. Economic goods such as food, clothing, housing, and weapons cannot be created out of nothing. Given current technologies, if people are to have goods, they must find the raw materials to produce them in nature—natural resources—and then process those raw materials.

满足需求所需的原材料种类和数量取决于技术。事实上,“自然资源”这一概念只有在技术层面才有意义。随着技术的发展,我们对宝贵自然资源的理解也在发生变化。例如,在我们知道如何加工石油并利用其发电之前,石油被视为一种黏糊糊的黑色物质,会使土地无法利用。一旦我们能够提炼石油,它就成为一种宝贵的自然资源。或者,如果开发出一种能够廉价地将沙子变成钢铁般物质的技术,那么……将成为几乎无限量的建筑材料。其他先前有价值的建筑材料将大幅贬值。目前尚处于起步阶段的一项技术变革有可能从根本上改变我们对自然资源的认知。这项技术就是纳米技术。纳米技术——在原子层面操纵物质的技术——使我们能够直接利用原子制造产品。利用纳米技术,我们无需转化已经形成的天然原材料即可制造我们想要的产品和商品。我们可以直接利用原子制造它们,并将生态足迹降至最低。

What, and how many, raw materials are needed to satisfy wants depends on technology. In fact, the concept, natural resources, has meaning only in reference to technology. As technology changes, what we consider valuable natural resources changes. For example, before we knew how to process oil and use it for generating power, oil was seen as black gooey stuff that made land unusable. Once we could refine it, it became a valuable natural resource. Alternatively, if a technology develops that can turn sand into a steel-like substance cheaply, then there will be an almost unlimited amount of building material. Other previously valuable building materials will lose much of their value. One technological change that is currently in its infancy has the potential to fundamentally change what we consider to be a natural resource. That technology is nanotechnology. Nanotechnology—technologies that manipulate matter on the atomic level—allows us to create products directly from atoms. Using nanotechnology we don’t have to transform already formed natural raw materials to create the products and goods we want. We can create them directly from atoms with a minimal ecological footprint.

自然资源、技术与气候变化

Natural Resources, Technology, and Climate Change

20世纪70年代,人们对​​未来资源供应的担忧达到了顶峰,一些生态学家认为我们正走向毁灭。他们的观点有两个:要么我们将耗尽自然资源,要么生产造成的污染将毁灭我们。

Concern about future availability of resources reached a high point in the 1970s as some ecologists argued that we were headed for doom. Their argument was twofold: Either we were going to run out of natural resources, or the pollution resulting from production was going to destroy us.

大多数经济学家认为,当时对生态问题的担忧有些过度。这种观点的基础是技术在变化,而我们所谓的“自然资源”也在变化。20世纪70年代,人们普遍担心石油即将枯竭,但现在人们的担忧是石油过剩。观点转变的原因之一是,自然的供求力量往往会缓解短缺问题。当一种资源变得稀缺时,其价格就会上涨。由于价格上涨,我们对它的使用就会减少,人们就会投入更多资源来设计新技术,以便在不使用这种资源的情况下达到同样的效果。因此,为了应对油价上涨,汽车的燃油效率更高,新的石油来源也得到了开发。

Most economists believed that much of the ecological concern at that time was overdone. The basis of this view is that technology changes, and as it does what we consider “natural resources” change. The fear that we were running out of oil that was rampant in the 1970s has been replaced with a fear that we have too much oil. One reason for the change of view is that the natural forces of supply and demand tend to ameliorate the problems of shortage. As a resource becomes scarcer, its price rises. Because of that price increase, we use less of it and individuals devote more resources to designing new technologies to achieve the same result without using that resource. Thus, in response to higher prices for oil, cars became more fuel efficient, and new sources of oil were developed.

如今,人们对石油的担忧并非在于石油即将枯竭,而是石油的使用会产生所谓的溢出效应或外部性,从而以其他方式危害我们。例如,大量使用石油发电的生态效应之一就是气候变化——人类活动(例如燃烧石油和其他化石燃料)对地球气候的影响(例如全球变暖)。科学家已经确定气候变化正在发生,地球表面的平均温度比一百年前更高。他们预测,地球表面的平均温度将继续快速上升。气温上升可能会对社会产生重大影响,使原本适宜居住的地区变得不再适宜居住,并改变世界其他地区的气候。

Today, the concern about oil is not that we are running out of it but that its use has what are called spillover effects or externalities, which harm us in other ways. For example, one of the ecological effects of the heavy use of oil to generate power is climate change—the effect on earths climate (such as global warming) caused by human activities such as the burning of oil and other fossil fuels. Scientists have determined that climate change is taking place and that the average surface temperature of the earth is higher than it was a hundred years ago. They predict it will continue to rise at a fast rate. That rise in temperature will likely have significant effects on society, making formerly habitable areas uninhabitable, and changing the weather for other parts of the world.

一些社会科学家认为,使用石油和其他化石燃料的溢出效应意味着我们应该回归一个更简单、技术更落后的社会,这样我们才能减少对生态系统的负面影响。另一些人则认为,技术进步才能为我们提供应对气候变化的答案。我们的社会选择何去何从是一个社会问题,它没有正确或错误的答案;社会科学强调这些问题,而不是解答这些问题。

Some social scientists argue that the spillover effects of using oil and other fossil fuels means that we should move back to a simpler, less technologically advanced society, so that we have less of a negative footprint on our ecosystem. Others argue that it is advances in technology that will provide our answers to climate change. What direction our society chooses is a social question that does not have a right or wrong answer; social science highlights the questions; it does not answer them.

人类世

The Anthropocene Age

地质学家将地球的形成划分为多个“时代”或时期。例如,全新世通常始于冰河时代末期,涵盖过去约12000年。然而,近年来,一些地质学家呼吁创建一个新的时代——人类世(人类的时代)。他们认为,人类世这个始于工业革命的时代类别,是为了反映人类活动对世界地质的重大反馈。

Geologists divide the earth’s formation into “ages” or epochs. For example, the Holocene Age generally begins with the end of the Ice Age and comprises the last 12,000 years or so. Recently, however, a number of geologists have been calling for the creation of a new age—the Anthropocene Age (the age of man). They argue that this Anthropocene Age category, which begins with the Industrial Revolution, is needed to reflect the significant feedback of humans’ actions on the geology of the world.

另一些人则认为,这种反馈一直都很重要,如果要使用“人类世”一词,则应该将其追溯到12000多年前,从而使“人类世”一词与“全新世” (Holocene )同义,后者在希腊语中意为“全新世”。我们认为,这些术语本身并不重要,重要的是围绕它们的争论。它反映了科学家们关于人类对环境的影响应该被重视到何种程度的争论。

Others argue that such feedback has always been important and that if one is to use the term Anthropocene, one should extend it back more than 12,000 years, making the term Anthropocene synonymous with Holocene, which in Greek means “entirely recent.” In our view, the terms themselves are not important, but the debate about them is. It reflects the debate among scientists about how much importance should be given to humans’ influence on the environment.

未来的技术和社会变革

Technology and Social Change in the Future

科技不断给我们带来惊喜,但这并没有阻止社会科学家试图发现广泛的趋势,并将这些趋势与未来联系起来。在本章的最后一部分,

Technology is continually surprising us but that doesn’t stop social scientists from trying to find broad trends and to relate those trends to the future. In this last part of the chapter, that is

我们试图做的事情。技术对社会影响的最大变化在于技术变革的本质。最近的技术变革并非取代了体力活动,而是取代了脑力活动。

what we attempt to do. The biggest change in technology’s effect on society involves the nature of the changing technology. Instead of technological changes that replace physical activities, the recent changes in technology are replacing mental activities.

工业革命从根本上改变了体力劳动。它用机器劳动取代了人类的大部分体力劳动。人们不再用手犁耕地,而是用拖拉机耕地。基于体力的劳动力变得不那么重要,取而代之的是技能型劳动力。这促使我们从体力劳动和产出的角度来思考技术。但技术影响的不仅仅是体力劳动,最新的技术发展也对所谓的脑力劳动产生了巨大的影响。

The Industrial Revolution fundamentally changed physical labor. It replaced much of the physical labor done by humans with machine labor. Instead of plowing the land with a hand plow, one plowed it with the tractor. Labor power based on strength became less important; it was replaced by skill-based labor power. That led us to think of technology in terms of physical labor and output. But technology affects more than just physical labor and the latest developments in technology are having their greatest effects on what might be called mental labor.

信息革命

The Information Revolution

这些技术变革被称为信息革命——用计算机处理信息取代人类处理信息。

The technological changes go under the name the Information Revolution—there replacement of human processing of information with computer processing of information.

越来越多的脑力活动可以由计算机更快、更高效、更精确地完成。其中一些活动你们可能很熟悉。数学和文字处理由计算机更有效地完成。同样,计算机很快将比人类更有效地驾驶,你不再需要开车去你想去的地方,而是乘坐一辆智能汽车——它可以自动驾驶。很快,课堂论文写作将由计算机完成,甚至教科书的编写也可能由计算机完成。只需点击论文写作应用程序或社会科学教科书写作应用程序即可。正如你们在附框中看到的,我们还没有到达那一步。但随着人工智能和深度学习的新发展,我们需要开始将计算机视为具有创造力和智能的。这将对社会和文化产生深远的影响。

More and more mental activities can be done more quickly, efficiently, and precisely by computers. Some such activities you are familiar with. Math and word processing are done much more effectively by computers. Similarly, driving will soon be done more effectively by computers than by humans, and instead of driving where you want to go, you will be driven by a smart car—which drives itself. Writing a paper for a class will soon be done by computers, and possibly even writing a textbook. Just click on the paper writing app, or the social science textbook writing app. As you can see in the accompanying box, we are not there yet. But with new developments in artificial intelligence and deep learning, we need to start to think of computers as being creative and intelligent. That has profound implications for society and out culture.

这些发展背后的过程在于计算机的配置方式。最初,计算机的设计初衷是提供具体的答案,并处理定义明确的问题。它们计算素数的能力比我们人类强得多。它们无法处理不完美的数据,也缺乏想象力。而新型计算机的设计更像我们的大脑,就像一个神经网络,旨在处理模糊的问题,并整合将想象力融入推理过程。它们在数据中寻找模式,并从中得出推论。这就是我们所说的智能,也是我们将新型计算机描述为展现人工智能的原因,尽管将其称为非人类智能更为合适。由于它们能够精确处理比人脑多得多的信息,这些计算机神经网络可以发现我们无法发现的模式——这就是我们所说的深度学习,因此它们不仅可以在处理精确信息方面胜过人类,而且在处理模糊信息方面也能胜过人类,我们过去称之为人类直觉,但或许更应该称之为人类深度学习。这是一个美丽新世界。

The process that underlies many of these developments is how computers are configured. Initially they were designed to provide specific answers and deal with well-defined questions. They can calculate prime numbers much better than we can. They couldn’t deal with imperfect data and could not be imaginative. The new computers are designed more like our brains are designed, as a neural net, which are meant to deal with ambiguous questions and integrate imagination into the reasoning process. They find patterns in the data and draw implications from those patterns. That’s what we call intelligence and is why we describe the new computers as exhibiting artificial intelligence, although it would better be called nonhuman intelligence. Because they can precisely process much more information than can our brains, these computer neural networks can find patterns that we cannot find—that’s what we call deep learning, and thus can out-do humans in dealing with not only precise information, but also with ambiguous information using what we used to call human intuition, but which is probably better called human deep learning. It’s a brave new world out there.

正是深度学习和人工智能的这些发展,促使我在本章的开头探讨了计算机在围棋比赛中击败人类的场景。这个故事旨在表达这样一个观点:随着计算机学会做人类传统上做的事情,人类正在变得过时,并被算法所取代。

It was these developments in deep learning and artificial intelligence that led me to begin the chapter with the discussion of a computer beating a human in Go. That story was meant to convey the point that as computers learn to do what humans have traditionally done, humans are becoming obsolete and are being replaced by algorithms.

这场信息革命对社会的影响是巨大的。所有类型的专业工作都将发生改变——对通用思维的需求减少,对协助计算机算法流程的利基技术人员的需求增加。教师、医生或律师等专业工作,过去被认为在社会中扮演着重要角色,并因此受到许多人的青睐,但现在将失去其令人满足的本质。人生的满足感必须来自其他事物。

The implications for society of this Information Revolution are huge. The nature of all types of professional jobs will change—reducing the demand for general purpose thinking, and increasing the demand for niche technicians who assist a computer based algorithmic process. Professional jobs, such as teacher, doctor, or lawyer, which were previously seen as playing an important role in society, and were therefore pleasing to many, will lose much of their fulfilling nature. Life fulfilment will have to come from something else.

例如,假设一位医生,他的工作是会见病人、做出诊断并开出治疗方案,例如服用药物或进行某种手术。现在让我们展望未来。病人打开一个应用程序,该应用程序会进行初步诊断,并建议他或她是否需要去诊断诊所进行全身扫描。计算机算法会利用应用程序和扫描结果中的信息,以及从互联网上获取的病人完整病史,做出诊断:你得了流感,应该(或不应该)服用抗病毒药物。无需医生。那里可能会有一位技术人员向你保证诊断合理,并安慰你,但他也可能被一个安慰机器人取代,它会依偎在你身边,告诉你没事的;过几天你就会感觉好些,并建议你喝点鸡汤。当然,也可能是更严重的情况;比如你需要做手术。计算机算法会安排手术,而这也将由一个由算法引导的机器人完成。

For example, consider a doctor, whose job is to meet with a patient, make a diagnosis, and prescribe a treatment, perhaps to take a medicine, or to have a certain type of operation. Now let’s see the future. The patient opens an app which does an initial diagnosis and advises him or her whether to go to a diagnostic clinic for a body scan. Using the information from the app and the scan, together with your complete medical history of the patient, which it accessed on the Internet, a computer algorithm provides a diagnosis: you have the flu, and should (or should not), take an antiviral. No doctor needed. There might be a technician there to reassure you that the diagnosis makes sense, and to comfort you, but he too might be replaced by a comfort robot, who cuddles up to you, telling you it’s ok; you’ll feel better in a couple of days, and advises you to have some chicken soup. It could, of course, be something more serious; say you need an operation. The computer algorithm will schedule one, and that too would be done by a robot guided by an algorithm.

这些变化不会立即发生。信息革命的算法部分需要几十年甚至几个世纪才能实现。演进过程可能会像这样:将出现越来越多的特定工作算法(SJA),旨在在特定生产领域取代人类。这些算法可能会被命名。例如,全科医生将被算法文档1取代;外科医生将被算法文档-97取代;专门针对35-40岁男性的生活教练将被算法-LC-M35-40取代。同时,通用算法将被创建,用于执行

These changes are not happening immediately. The algorithmic component of the Information Revolution will take decades, even centuries to implement. The evolution will likely go something like this. There will be an increasing number of Specific Job Algorithms (SJAs) designed to replace humans in just specific facets of production. These algorithms will likely be designated by names. For example, General Physicians will be replaced by Algorithm Doc1; Surgeons by Algorithm Doc-97 and Life Coaches specializing in males 35-40 by Algorithm-LC-M35-40. Simultaneously, general-purpose algorithms will be created that can do

他们将承担多种类型的工作——总体规划和监督——并控制和协调具体的算法。个人将协助应用程序处理一些尚不值得设计应用程序的小问题。

multiple types of jobs—overall planning and supervision—and they will control and coordinate the specific algorithms. Individuals will assist the apps handling small issues for which it hasn’t yet been worth designing an app.

不要屏住呼吸,期待立即改变

Don't Hold Your Breath Expecting Immediate Change

一旦我们开发出所有这些技术,问题在于人类将扮演什么角色——所有工作难道​​不会消失吗?正如我们之前所讨论的,情况不太可能如此。根据过去的经验,每个人都会有工作。问题是:这些工作是否是好工作,其薪资水平是否能被人们乃至整个社会接受?这远非定论。信息革命正在创造少量高薪的脑力劳动,以及大量相对低薪且对智力要求不高的脑力劳动。

Once we’ve developed all these, the question is what role will there be for humans—won’t all jobs disappear? As we discussed earlier, that is unlikely to be the case. Based on past experience, there will be jobs for everyone. The question is: Will the jobs be good jobs at pay levels that people, and society as a whole, are willing to accept? That is far from clear. The Information Revolution is creating a small number of very highly paid mental jobs, and a large number of relatively low-paid and not especially intellectually fulfilling, mental jobs.

因此,社会面临的更深层次的问题并非经济问题,而是心理和精神层面的问题。那种因感到被需要而产生的需要感和满足感——做一些自己认为有价值且有益的事情——将会离我们许多​​人而去。正是这种感觉引发了人们对宗教的兴趣,宗教会提出一些关于人生的更宏大的问题:人生的目的是什么?我们为何而生?因此,尽管许多人认为科技是反宗教的,但现代科技的发展很可能正在推动人们进行宗教反思。

So the deeper problem facing society is not economic, but rather psychological and spiritual. The sense of need and fulfilment that comes from feeling needed—doing something that one senses is worthwhile and helpful—will be slipping away from many of us. It is such feelings that generate interest in religion that ask the bigger questions of life: What is its purpose, and why are we here? So while many see technology as anti-religious, modern developments in technology may well be pushing people toward religious reflection.

结论:对未来的推测

Conclusion: Speculating About the Future

在思考科技对未来的影响时,你很快就会发现,预测未来是社会科学中最困难却又最有趣的活动之一;它让想象力自由驰骋。像“企业号”这样的宇宙飞船会不会源于我们对太空的探索?我们是否会发现彻底改变我们生活的新技术,例如即时交通或情报传输?可能性无穷无尽,而且对特定个体而言并不总是令人愉悦的。这一推测旨在让你深刻认识到,2050年的生活将与2020年截然不同,社会制度必须做出改变才能适应科技的发展。

In considering the effects of technology on the future, you will quickly see that predicting the future is one of the most difficult but enjoyable activities of social science; it allows the imagination to roam. Will spaceships like the Enterprise develop out of our exploration of space efforts? Will we find new technologies that totally change our lives, such as instant transportation or intelligence transfers? The possibilities are endless and not always pleasant for specific individuals. The point of this speculation is to bring home to you the fact that life in 2050 will be significantly different from life in 2020, and that social institutions will have to change to fit the technology.

未来的技术变革可能远比我们刚才的推测更具想象力。一些富有想象力的技术变革及其潜在影响列于“时间轴:未来”方框中。这些设想虽然天马行空,但都曾被未来学家们提出过。将它们列在这里,并非因为我们期待它们会成为现实,而是为了促使我们反思和思考它们对社会和文化的影响。每一项变革都会带来社会、经济和文化后果,进而影响社会利用这些技术为自己谋利而非损害的能力。社会科学的意义在于,引导社会利用技术为善而非为恶。

The technology of the future will probably involve changes that are much more imaginative than those we have just speculated on. Some imaginative technological changes and their potential effects are listed in the Timeline: the Future box. Each of these ideas is fanciful, but each has been advanced by futurists at one time or another. They are placed here, not because we expect them to materialize, but to make us reflect and think about their implications for society and culture. Each would have social, economic, and cultural consequences that in turn would affect society’s ability to use that technology to its advantage and not to its detriment. Seeing that society uses technology for good rather than evil is what social science is all about.

学习回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 技术包括我们与环境互动的工具、手段和方法。
  • Technology comprises the tools, means, and methods through which we interact with our environment.
  • 技术影响文化,文化影响技术。
  • Technology influences culture, and culture influences technology.
  • 工业革命通过引入物质产品的互换性和大规模生产,极大地改变了社会的各个方面。
  • The Industrial Revolution significantly changed all aspects of society through its introduction of interchangeability and mass production of material products.
  • 技术不会减少就业岗位的总数,但它会改变所提供就业岗位的构成和相对薪酬。
  • Technology does not decrease the total number of jobs, but it changes the composition and relative pay of the jobs provided.
  • 随着技术的变化,我们所认为的自然资源也发生了变化。
  • As technology changes, what we consider a natural resource changes.
  • 信息革命对脑力劳动的影响就如同工业革命对体力劳动的影响一样。
  • The Information Revolution is doing to mental work what the Industrial Revolution did to physical work.
  • 未来潜在的技术发展仅受想象力的限制。
  • Potential technological developments in the future are limited only by the imagination.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 人工智能(95)
  • artificial intelligence (95)
  • 人类世(105)
  • Anthropocene Age (105)
  • 装配线 (98)
  • assembly line (98)
  • 气候变化(105)
  • climate change (105)
  • 深度学习(95)
  • deep learning (95)
  • 经济活动(103)
  • economic activities (103)
  • 全球化 (342)
  • globalization (342)
  • 工业革命(96)
  • Industrial Revolution (96)
  • 信息革命(106)
  • Information Revolution (106)
  • 互换性(97)
  • interchangeability (97)
  • 量产 (98)
  • mass production (98)
  • 纳米技术(105)
  • nanotechnology (105)
  • 个人制造技术(104)
  • personal fabrication technology (104)
  • 稀缺商品(103)
  • scarce goods (103)
  • 标准化(97)
  • Standardization (97)
  • 技术 (94)
  • technology (94)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 为什么 AlphaGo 战胜人类顶级围棋选手是如此重要的事件?
  2. Why was AlphaGo’s win over a top human Go player so important an event?
  3. 列举一些过去发生的技术变革,并解释你认为它是如何改变现状的。
  4. Name some technological change that took place in the past and explain how you think it has changed conditions ever since.
  5. 什么是工业革命?它在美国取得成功的原因有哪些?
  6. What was the Industrial Revolution? What are some of the reasons it was successful in the United States?
  7. 为什么标准化和互换性对大规模生产如此重要?
  8. Why are standardization and interchangeability so important to mass production?
  9. 当机器能够生产以前手工制造的产品时,这对就业人数、工资水平、雇主利润和产品质量产生了什么影响?
  10. When it became possible for machines to make products formerly made by hand, what effects did this have on the number of people employed? On the level of wages? On the profit of employers? On the quality of the products?
  11. 解释装配线技术如何引发其他技术和文化变革。
  12. Explain how the technology of the assembly line led to other technological and cultural changes.
  13. 技术变革是否会减少社会就业岗位的数量?
  14. Does technological change reduce the number of jobs in society?
  15. 缩短专利期限作为一项政策是否合理?
  16. Does reducing the length of patents make sense as a policy?
  17. 自然资源为何只有与技术相关才有意义?
  18. In what way do natural resources only have meaning in relation to technology?
  19. 世界自然资源即将枯竭的说法有道理吗?
  20. Does the argument that the world is going to run out of natural resources make sense?
  21. 人类世是什么意思?
  22. What is meant by the Anthropocene Age?
  23. 信息革命与工业革命有何不同?
  24. How does the Information Revolution differ from the Industrial Revolution?
  25. 您认为哪些技术变革不应该进行?它们是什么?如果您反对某项技术变革,那么对于该变革旨在解决的问题,您有什么其他解决方案?
  26. Are there any technological changes you think should not be made? What are they? If you oppose a particular technological change, what alternative solution do you have for the problem that change was meant to address?
  27. 尝试预测一下未来可能发生的技术变革。这项变革会对社会产生什么影响?
  28. Try your hand at predicting a technological change that may occur in the future. What effects on society might that change produce?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 访问网站www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/brooklynbridge.htm,了解布鲁克林大桥建造过程中遇到的技术难题。建造者们是如何克服这些困难的?
  2. Using the website www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/brooklynbridge.htm and learn about the technical problems faced in constructing the Brooklyn Bridge. How did the builders overcome these difficulties?
  3. 访问www.usbr.gov/projects并查找胡佛大坝。它有多大?位于何处?何时建造?
  4. Go to www.usbr.gov/projects and look up the Hoover Dam. How large is the structure? Where is it located and when was it built?
  5. 请访问www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyld=19174580阅读或收听文章。谁制造了蓝光光盘?哪些新技术可能会取代蓝光光盘?文章中提到了哪场早期的格式之争?当时哪个品牌最终胜出?
  6. Go to www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyld=19174580 and either read the article or listen to it. Who makes Blu-ray discs? What new technology may make Blu-ray discs obsolete? What earlier formatting war is mentioned in the article, and which brand came out on top then?
  7. 请访问www.livescience.com/18801-greatest-inventions.html并参加测验。你的得分是多少?
  8. Go to www.livescience.com/18801-greatest-inventions.html and take the quiz. How do you score?
  9. 请访问www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/07/countries-leasing-most-greenhouse-gas/。气候变化会带来哪些后果?
  10. Go to www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/07/countries-emitting-most-greenhouse-gas/. What are some of the consequences of climate change?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 布朗,大卫·E. 编辑《发明现代美国:从微波炉到鼠标》,马萨诸塞州剑桥:麻省理工学院出版社,2002 年。
  • Brown, David E., ed., Inventing Modern America: From the Microwave to the Mouse, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002.
  • Brynjolfsson,Erik 和 Andrew McAfee,《第二次机器时代》,纽约:W. W Norton,2015 年。
  • Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age, New York: W. W Norton, 2015.
  • 卡尔,尼古拉斯,《玻璃笼子:电脑如何改变我们》,纽约:W W. Norton,2015 年。
  • Carr, Nicholas, The Glass Cage: How Our Computers Are Changing Us, New York: W W. Norton, 2015.
  • 埃辛格,詹姆斯,《提花网:手工织布机如何引领信息时代的诞生》牛津:牛津大学出版社,2004 年。
  • Essinger, James, Jacquard’s Web: How a Hand Loom Led to the Birth of the Information Age, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
  • 弗里曼,约书亚,《巨兽:工厂史与现代世界的形成》纽约:WW Norton,2018 年。
  • Freeman, Joshua, Behemoth: A History of the Factory and the Making of the Modem World, New York: W. W. Norton, 2018.
  • 侯赛因,阿米尔,《情感机器:人工智能时代的到来》纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2017 年。
  • Husain, Amir, The Sentiment Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017.
  • 科特勒,史蒂文,《明日世界:从科幻小说到科学事实的旅程》,华盛顿州西雅图:亚马逊出版公司,2015 年。
  • Kotler, Steven, Tomorrowland: Our Journey from Science Fiction to Science Fact, Seattle, WA: Amazon Publishing, 2015.
  • 米德,玛格丽特,编辑,《文化模式与技术变革》纽约:新美国图书馆/导师,1956 年。
  • Mead, Margaret, ed., Cultural Patterns and Technical Change, New York: New American Library/Mentor, 1956.
  • 米利特,大卫,《人类世:人类时代》 Create Space Independent Publishing,2015 年。
  • Millett, David, Anthropocene: The Age of Man, Create Space Independent Publishing, 2015.
  • 雷德利,马特,《万物的进化:新思想的涌现》纽约:哈珀出版社,2015 年。
  • Ridley, Matt, The Evolution of Everything: Flow New Ideas Emerge, New York: Harper, 2015.
  • 施瓦布,克劳斯,《第四次工业革命》纽约:企鹅兰登书屋,2016 年。
  • Schwab, Klaus, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, New York: Penguin Random House, 2016.
  • 詹姆斯·什里夫,《基因组战争:克雷格·文特纳如何试图夺取生命密码并拯救世界》纽约:克诺夫出版社,2004 年。
  • Shreeve, James, The Genome War: How Craig Ventner Tried to Capture the Code of Life and Save the World, New York: Knopf, 2004.
  • 托夫勒,阿尔文,《未来的冲击》纽约:班塔姆出版社,1971 年。
  • Toffler, Alvin, Future Shock, New York: Bantam, 1971.
  • Turkle,Sherry,《孤独在一起:为什么我们对科技的期望更高,而对彼此的期望更低》纽约:Basic Books,2011 年。
  • Turkle, Sherry, Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, New York: Basic Books, 2011.
  • Warschauer, Mark,《技术与社会包容:重新思考数字鸿沟》 ,马萨诸塞州剑桥:麻省理工学院出版社,2003 年。
  • Warschauer, Mark, Technology and Social Inclusion: Rethinking the Digital Divide, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003.
  • 韦纳史密斯,凯利和扎克·韦纳史密斯。《即将到来:十大新兴科技将改善或毁灭一切》纽约:企鹅兰登书屋,2017年。
  • Weinersmith, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith. Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything. New York: Penguin Random House, 2017.
  • 韦斯特,达雷尔,《转折点:人工智能时代的政策制定》华盛顿特区:布鲁金斯学会,2020 年。
  • West, Darrell, Turning Point: Policymaking in the Era of Artificial Intelligence, Washington, DC: Brookings, 2020.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第七心理学、社会与文化

chapter 7 Psychology, Society, and Culture

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-7

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-7

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 解释文化与个性之间的关系
  • Explain how culture and personality are related
  • 总结先天与后天之争
  • Summarize the nature/nurture debate
  • 说明正强化和负强化的重要性
  • State the importance of positive and negative reinforcement
  • 讨论马斯洛需求层次理论
  • Discuss Maslow’s hierarchy
  • 区分本我、自我和超我
  • Differentiate the id, ego, and superego
  • 解释智商的计算方法及其使用中的问题
  • Explain how IQ is calculated and the problems with its use
  • 定义偏差并列举五种有关偏差的社会学理论
  • Define deviance and name five sociological theories about deviance

文化是由文化中的个体创造的,但个体的性格却由文化塑造和塑造。在本章中,我们将从社会心理学的角度探讨个体与社会的关系。我们的讨论将主要围绕性格展开。性格是个体遗传和后天习得特征的总体组合,并通过个体的行为体现出来。文化在塑造个体性格方面发挥着重要作用,而个体对文化的影响通常很小。作为个体,人们必须接受他们所处的文化,如果他们希望过上令人满意的生活,就必须适应它。

Culture is created by the individuals within that culture, but individuals’ personalities are shaped and molded by culture. In this chapter, we take a social psychology perspective and consider the relationship between the individual and society. Much of our discussion will center on personality. Personality is the total organization of the inherited and acquired characteristics of an individual as evidenced by the individual’s behavior. Culture’s role in shaping individual personality is major, whereas each individual’s influence on culture is usually slight. As individuals, people must accept their culture much as they find it, and if they hope to lead satisfactory lives as human beings, they must adjust to it.

个体对文化的这种依赖,有时使文化看起来像是一个独立的实体,无论其承载者是谁,它都存在且延续。当我们从历史的角度审视文化,并注意到它的许多基本要素代代相传时,这种印象便会更加深刻。两百年前,英语的本质特征与今天并无太大区别。然而,当时所有讲英语的人,如今已无一人健在。

This dependence of the individual on culture sometimes makes culture appear to be an independent entity, something that has an existence and continuity regardless of the people who are its carriers. This impression is strengthened when we view culture historically and note that many of its basic elements persist generation after generation. Two hundred years ago, the English language in its essential characteristics was not very different from what it is today. Yet, of all those who spoke English then, not a single person is now alive.

出于某些目的,人们很容易将文化视为独立、客观的存在。然而,归根结底,这并不正确。所有文化都是人为创造的。如果我们仔细分析文化,就会发现它只是一系列特定群体个体特有的模式化反应。正是人们持有信仰、形成态度、践行习俗,并按照群体所接受的模式行事。文化的建立是如此缓慢和渐进,以至于我们很少能够分离出特定个体的贡献。在一个庞大的社会中,个体只是数百万人中的一个。此外,大多数人接受自己所处的社会境况,很少试图去改变它。

For some purposes, it is convenient to think of culture as if it had an independent, objective existence. In the final analysis, however, this is untrue. All cultures have been created by people. When we analyze culture closely, we find only a series of patterned reactions characteristic of the individuals who belong to a given group. It is people who hold beliefs, have attitudes, practice customs, and behave in conformity with patterns accepted by the group. Cultures are built up so slowly and gradually that it is seldom possible to isolate the contributions made by particular individuals. In a large society, the individual is only one among millions. Furthermore, most individuals accept the social situation in which they find themselves and make little attempt to change it.

个体受其文化塑造,并不意味着他们被剥夺了控制自身行为、选择生活方式,甚至影响周围环境的一切自由。任何普遍的文化模式都具有一定程度的灵活性,允许与规范有所差异。在简单的原始社会中,允许的差异自由或许相当有限,但在现代复杂社会中,它们的作用却不容小觑。然而,在任何社会中,普通个体都很少意识到文化对自由的限制程度。文化已经如此内化——几乎成为人格的基本组成部分——以至于大多数时候,人们不愿做出与文化认可不同的行为。只有在特殊情况下,他们才会敏锐地意识到自身欲望与社会允许的行为之间的冲突。

The fact that people as individuals are shaped by their culture does not mean that they are deprived of all freedom to control their behavior, to choose their mode of life, or even to affect the conditions that surround them. Any general cultural pattern is flexible to a degree and permits some variations from the norms. In simple primitive societies, the permissible variations may be rather limited, but in modern complex societies they are great. However, in any society the average individual is seldom aware of the extent to which culture restricts freedom. Culture becomes so internalized—so much a basic part of personality—that most of the time people do not wish to behave in ways other than those culturally approved. Only in special situations do they become keenly aware of conflicts between their own desires and the kind of conduct that is socially permissible.

个人的社会

Socialization of the Individual

社会化在人类人格发展中扮演着重要的角色。这并不意味着儿童的人格不会受到其生物遗传和与物质环境接触的重大影响。然而,在大多数情况下,儿童会从他人身上学习行为模式以及激发其行为的态度、信念和期望。所有这些在很大程度上都源于文化,因此,随着儿童的成长和发展,其行为在更大程度上反映了其出生社会的文化。

Socialization plays a major role in the development of human personality. This does not mean that a child’s personality may not be greatly influenced by its biological inheritance and by contacts with the physical environment. For the most part, however, a child learns from people the patterns of behavior and the attitudes, beliefs, and expectations that motivate behavior. All of these are largely cultural in origin, and, therefore, as a child grows and develops, his or her behavior reflects to an ever-greater degree the culture of the society into which he or she was born.

童年早期的意义

Significance of the Early Years of Childhood

家庭群体中幼儿的经历似乎对人格发展的影响最大。正常的婴儿很早就开始识别熟悉的面孔,感知赞同和反对,寻求关注,并以其他方式对社会环境做出反应。

The experiences of the young child within the family group seem to have the greatest influence on the development of human personality. Very early a normal baby begins to recognize familiar faces, sense approval and disapproval, seek attention, and in other ways react to the social environment.

我们的个性在幼儿时期形成。尽管我们的知识存在巨大差距,但我们已经发现了儿童学习的一些方式。这一发现的领导者之一是著名心理学家让·皮亚杰,他提出了几种被广泛接受的儿童发展理论。他的第一点显而易见:幼儿的思维方式与成人不同。例如,许多孩子认为他们的影子是一个活生生的实体,无论他们走到哪里都会跟着他们。同样,想象中的朋友晚上会在房间里飞来飞去,而从弹珠到吸尘器等无生命的物体都具有非常人性化的特征。对他们来说,现实与想象交织在一起。随着年龄的增长,我们大多数人学会了区分现实与想象。然而,如果一个人缺乏适当的环境,他或她将无法做到这一点,可能会一辈子生活在半幻想的世界中。

Our personalities develop in this early childhood. Although tremendous gaps exist in our knowledge, we have discovered some of the ways in which children learn. One of the leaders in this discovery was noted psychologist Jean Piaget who developed several widely accepted theories on the development of children. His first point is obvious: Very young children think differently from adults. For example, many children think their shadow is a living entity that follows them wherever they go. Similarly, imaginary friends fly around the room at night, and inanimate objects, from marbles to vacuum cleaners, have very human characteristics. Reality for them blends in with imagination. As we grow older, most of us learn to separate reality from imagination. If, however, an individual lacks the right environment, he or she will not be able to do so and may go through an entire lifetime living in a semifantasy world.

皮亚杰认为将儿童的一生划分为四个阶段(如图7.1所示)很有帮助。从出生到两岁,儿童主要关注的是学习关于物理对象的知识。从两岁到六七岁,儿童学习语言、梦境和幻想中的符号。接下来,他们开始学习抽象概念,例如数字及其之间的关系。最后,从十二岁到十五岁,儿童掌握了纯粹的逻辑思维,并学会理解诸如反讽和双关语之类的微妙信息。

Piaget finds it useful to divide a child’s life into four stages (shown in Figure 7.1). From birth to two years, a child is primarily concerned with learning about physical objects. From two to six or seven years, the youngster learns about symbols in language, dreams, and fantasy. Next, he or she begins to learn about abstract concepts such as numbers and the relationships between them. Finally, from ages twelve to fifteen, the child masters purely logical thought and learns to understand nuanced messages, such as irony and double entendres.

为了在情感和心理上正常发展,孩子必须被接纳并获得关爱,但过度保护和过度关爱并不可取,因为它们往往会导致孩子依赖他人,变得不成熟。另一方面,父母的拒绝和缺乏关爱会造成孩子的不安全感和自卑感,并常常引发一些补偿性反应,例如攻击性、叛逆性或霸道性行为。

In order to develop normally both emotionally and mentally, a child must be accepted and receive affection, but overprotection and over affection are not desirable, for they tend to lead to dependency and immaturity. At the other extreme, parental rejection and lack of affection create feelings of insecurity and inferiority and often bring on compensatory reactions such as aggressive, rebellious, or domineering behavior.

随着幼儿的成长,他们不仅会与父母、兄弟姐妹和其他家庭成员接触,还会与邻居、玩伴等外界人士接触。他们的身体能力和语言能力不断增强,并不断适应新的人和新的环境。这些早期的经历会留下几乎不可磨灭的印象,并影响每个人性格的“定型”。

As young children grow, they come into contact not only with parents, brothers and sisters, and other members of the household, but also with outsiders such as neighbors and playmates. They acquire greater physical competence and greater skill in the use of language and continually make adjustments to new people and new situations. These early experiences leave nearly indelible impressions and influence the “set” of each one’s personality.

图7.1皮亚杰的四个阶段。

Figure 7.1Piaget’s four stages.

个体环境差异的重要性

Significance of Differences in Individual Environment

是否有两个个体拥有完全相同的遗传特征尚待考证,但同卵双胞胎的情况与此非常接近。当然,没有两个人拥有完全相同的社会环境。有些个体环境的差异,即使是最粗心的观察者也能一目了然,但其他差异则不那么容易察觉。

It is questionable whether any two individuals have precisely the same hereditary characteristics, though in the case of identical twins there is a close approximation to this situation. Certainly, no two individuals have exactly the same social environment. Some of the differences in individual environments are obvious to the most casual observer, but other differences are not so easy to see.

我们都知道,在像美国这样的国家,人们往往在差异很大的社会环境中成长。首先,不同地区人们的语言、态度和习俗存在显著差异。此外,即使在同一地区,乡村生活和城市生活也存在差异;即使在一个中等规模的城市,也能发现各种各样或多或少不同的社会群体。其中最重要的是那些因收入、社会地位、宗教、国籍或种族差异而彼此不同的群体。但个人社会环境的差异远不止于此。在任何一个社会群体中,不同家庭的生活方式都可能存在显著差异,因此,在一个家庭中长大的孩子可能与在另一个家庭中长大的孩子拥有截然不同的环境。

We are all aware that in a country such as the United States people often grow up in social environments that differ widely. To begin with, there are noticeable differences in the language, attitudes, and customs of the people in different regions. Also, even in the same region there are differences between rural life and city life; and in a city of even moderate size there can be found a great variety of more or less distinct social groups. Among the more important of these groups are those set off from one another by differences in income, social prestige, religion, nationality, or race. But differences in individual social environment go further than this. In any given social group, families are likely to differ significantly from one another in their modes of life, so that a child brought up in one family may have a quite different environment from that of a child reared in another.

所有这些差异都相当明显。虽然不那么明显,但确实如此,在同一个家庭同时长大的两个孩子可能会有截然不同的环境。这是因为社会环境不仅取决于人,还取决于与人之间的个人关系的性质。一个家庭中的一个孩子可能深受父母喜爱,拥有一切优势,甚至可能被过度宠爱,而另一个孩子可能不被喜欢、被忽视,甚至被虐待。显然,这样的孩子根本不拥有相同的环境,差异可能会对他们的心理和情感发展、性格以及他们晚年与他人的关系产生深远而持久的影响。

All these differences are fairly obvious. It is not quite so obvious, but nonetheless true, that two children brought up in the same family at the same time may have quite dissimilar environments. This is because social environment depends not only on people, but also on the nature of personal relations with them. One child in a family may be loved by the parents, given every advantage, perhaps be overindulged, whereas another child may be disliked, neglected, even mistreated. Clearly, such children do not have at all the same environment, and the differences are likely to have deep and lasting effects on their mental and emotional development, on their personalities, and on their relations with other people in later years.

极度孤立对儿童的影响

Effects of Extreme Isolation on Children

这项针对长期缺乏社会接触的儿童的研究,揭示了社会化在儿童时期的发生情况,证明了社会化的重要性。研究还探讨了在以后的岁月中弥补早期未能正常发育的可能性。

The study of children who have been largely isolated from social contacts demonstrates the importance of socialization by showing what happens in its absence. It also considers the possibility of compensating in later years for development that failed to take place earlier at the normal time.

很难找到从出生起就与其他人完全隔绝的孩子。原因很简单。人类婴儿非常无助,如果没有理解其需求的长辈的照顾,他们根本无法生存。然而,也有一些报道指出,一些儿童在幼年时期就与人类部分或完全隔绝,并且持续了相当长一段时间。这些报道分为两类:(1)野性儿童——在野外或未驯服的状态下与动物一起生活的孩子;以及 (2) 一些儿童被隔离在房间、地下室或阁楼里,除了提供食物和水外,几乎得不到任何关注。(还有一些不那么极端的隔离例子,比如一些儿童仅仅被忽视,或者在机构里接受或多或少缺乏人情味的照顾。)

It is impossible to find children who have been completely isolated from other human beings from the time of birth. The reason is simple. The human infant is so helpless that it cannot possibly survive without receiving some care from older people who understand its needs. However, cases have been reported of children who, in early life, have been partially or completely isolated from human contact over considerable periods. These reports are of two types: (1) cases of feral children—children who have lived in a wild or untamed state with animals—and (2) cases of children kept isolated in a room, basement, or attic and given little attention except for being provided with food and drink. (Less extreme examples of isolation occur with children who are merely neglected, or who are cared for, more or less impersonally, in institutions.)

关于野孩子的故事激发人们的想象力。这些故事在各个时代都有流传,人们相信孩子们在很小的时候就被野猪、狼、熊或其他动物照顾。这些故事几乎都是道听途说,它们是否有事实依据令人怀疑。其中最古老的传说或许是关于罗马的传奇开国者——双胞胎罗慕路斯和雷穆斯,据说他们在婴儿时期被遗弃,并被狼哺育。你可能已经注意到,我们的世界历史忽略了这对传奇双胞胎。

Stories of feral children appeal to the imagination. They are stories that have been told in all ages about children believed to have been cared for when very young by boars, wolves, bears, or other animals. These stories have nearly always been spread by hearsay, and it is doubtful whether any of them are based on fact. Perhaps the oldest of such tales is about the legendary founders of Rome, the twins Romulus and Remus, who are said to have been abandoned as infants and suckled by a wolf. As you might have noticed, our history of the world skipped these legendary twins.

唯一可信的报道是关于在印度狼窝里发现的两个孩子的。他们不会说话,据说用四肢奔跑,其他方面也表现出类似动物的行为。在人类的照料下,他们对社交和教育的尝试几乎没有反应,并且都在幼年时期去世。大多数心理学家认为,他们很可能患有婴儿自闭症,这是一种儿童无法对他人的情感做出反应的疾病。大多数心理学家认为,这些孩子在被发现前不久就因为患有自闭症而被遗弃。

The one report that has some credibility is of two children found in a wolf den in India. They could not talk, and they are reported to have run on all fours and in other respects to have exhibited animal-like behavior. Under human care, they responded very little to the attempts made to socialize and educate them, and both died at an early age. Most psychologists believe that they most likely suffered from infantile autism, a condition in which a child is unable to respond emotionally to others. Most psychologists believe these children, not very long before they were found, had been abandoned because they were autistic.

传说罗马的缔造者是一对双胞胎,罗慕路斯和雷穆斯,由狼抚养长大。 © Nikreates/Alamy Stock Photo

According to legend, the founders of Rome were human twins, Romulus and Remus, who were nurtured hy a wolf. © Nikreates/Alamy Stock Photo

虽然关于野孩子的故事应该持怀疑态度,但似乎有一些确凿的案例,表明一些儿童被锁在地下室、阁楼或楼上房间很长一段时间,几乎与所有正常人际接触隔绝。其中一个案例涉及一个名叫伊莎贝尔的女孩,由于她是私生子,她一直和聋哑母亲一起被关在一个黑暗的房间里,直到六岁半。在另一个案例中,一个名叫安娜的女孩被单独关在一个房间里,直到她六岁左右。

Though stories of feral children should be regarded with skepticism, there appear to be well-authenticated cases of children who for considerable periods of time have been locked in basements, attics, or upstairs rooms and isolated from almost all normal human contacts. One case involved a girl named Isabelle, who, because she was illegitimate, was kept secluded in a dark room with her deaf-mute mother until she was six and a half years old. In another case, a girl named Anna was kept in a room alone until she was about six.

在这些案例中,女孩被发现时,其行为在很多方面都与婴儿或野生动物相似。但伊莎贝尔在被安置在正常的社会环境中并接受特殊训练后,很快就赶上了。几年后,她在学校取得了良好的进步,给人留下了一个聪明、开朗、精力充沛的小女孩的印象。然而,当安娜被安置在正常环境中时,她的进步却远不如人意,在她十岁半去世时,仍然被认为是精神残疾。

In each of these cases, when the girl was discovered, her behavior in many respects resembled that of an infant or a wild animal. But Isabelle, when placed in a normal social environment and given special training, caught up rapidly. In a few years, she was making good progress in school and gave the impression of a bright, cheerful, energetic little girl. However, when Anna was placed in a normal environment, she made much less progress, and she was still considered mentally disabled when she died at the age of ten and a half.

我们无法得知安娜为何未能像伊莎贝尔那样发育良好。或许伊莎贝尔与聋哑母亲的亲密接触让她感受到爱与安全,因此在情感发展方面比安娜更具优势;又或许,在她脱离隔离后,她得到了更多专家的关注。也有可能,伊莎贝尔的基因遗传比安娜更优越。

We have no way of knowing why Anna failed to develop as much as Isabelle. Perhaps Isabelle’s close contact with her deaf-mute mother gave her a sense of being loved and secure, and thus she enjoyed a great advantage over Anna in her emotional development, or it may be that she received more expert attention after she was removed from isolation. It is also possible that Isabelles biological inheritance was superior to Anna’s.

1970年,一名十三岁的女孩被发现,她被命名为吉妮。她被年迈的患有精神疾病的父母绑在房间里,禁止与人接触。她只吃牛奶和婴儿食品,从未被人说过话。她大小便失禁,不会说话,体重只有57磅(约27公斤)。被送往医院后,她学会了交流,尽管母亲说她出生时很正常,但吉妮的智商只有74,语言​​能力也从未完全发育。

In 1970, a thirteen-year-old girl, who was given the name Genie, was found. She had been tied up and kept in a room without human contact by her elderly parents, who were psychologically disturbed. She had been fed only milk and baby food and was never spoken to. She was incontinent, could not speak, and weighed only 57 pounds. After she was brought to a hospital, she learned to communicate, but, although her mother said that she had been normal at birth, Genies IQ was only seventy-four and her language ability never fully developed.

人格及其发展

Personality and Its Development

要全面理解个人与社会的关系,清晰地理解人格的含义至关重要。有人说,每个人在某些方面都与其他人相似,在某些方面又与其他人相似,而在某些方面又独一无二。

To have a full understanding of the relationship between individuals and society, it is helpful to have a clear concept of the meaning of personality. It has been said that every human being is in some respects like all others, in some respects like some others, and in some respects like no others.

正如我们之前提到的,人格可以定义为个体遗传和后天习得特征的总和,并通过个体行为表现出来。人格是个体原始生物本质与其社会和自然环境相互作用的产物。因此,人格带有四方面的印记:

As we mentioned earlier, personality may be defined as the total organization of the inherited and acquired characteristics of an individual as evidenced by the individual’s behavior. It is the product of the interaction between an individual’s original biological nature and his or her social and natural environment. Therefore, it bears the imprint of four things:

  1. 个人的遗传潜力
  2. The inherited potentialities of the individual
  3. 自然环境
  4. Natural environment
  5. 个人社会的文化
  6. The culture of the individual’s society
  7. 独特的个人经历
  8. Unique personal experiences

然而,人格一旦开始形成,就会成为一种独立的力量,在其未来的发展以及个体对整个环境的适应中发挥主导作用。

However, once personality has begun to form, it becomes an independent force that may play a dominant part in its own future development and in the adjustment of the individual to the total environment.

先天与后天之争

The Nature/Nurture Debate

人类婴儿出生时是无助的。它不会走路,不会说话,甚至无法坐起、翻身或抓握递给它的物品。它不像大多数动物那样具备大量的遗传本能——即无需学习而遗传下来的复杂行为模式。本能使动物能够满足其发育各个阶段出现的需求。鸟类筑巢的本能就是一个很好的例子。

The human baby is a helpless creature at birth. It cannot walk; it cannot talk; it cannot even sit up, turn itself over, or grasp an object it is offered. It is not equipped, as are most animals, with a large number of hereditary instincts—inherited complex patterns of behavior that do not have to be learned. Instincts enable animals to satisfy needs that arise at various stages of their development. A good example is the nest-building instinct of birds.

人类婴儿出生时就具备本能,但他们也拥有与生俱来的成长和发育能力。婴儿逐渐学会适应环境,并在此过程中逐渐意识到自己是一个独立于环境的人。随着身体发育,其学习能力不断增强,但所有日后成为正常人的行为模式都必须学习,而学习的过程并不总是一帆风顺的。

Human babies at birth have instincts, but they also have an innate capacity for growth and development. Gradually, a baby learns to adjust to its environment, and in the process it slowly becomes conscious of itself as a person, separate from its environment. As it develops physically, its power to learn keeps increasing, but all the patterns of behavior that will later characterize it as a normal human being must be learned, and the learning process is not always easy.

婴儿继承的驱动力是满足基本需求的冲动,例如睡眠或食物。当这些需求得不到满足时,婴儿会感到紧张或不适。这些驱动力为学习提供了动力。饥饿是人类最强大的驱动力之一。为了满足饥饿感,婴儿会依赖母亲的乳房或奶瓶。但当婴儿感到饥饿时,营养并非总是唾手可得,随着不适感的增加,婴儿会哭闹。这可能会带来乳房或奶瓶,以及饥饿感得到满足后的愉悦感。不久之后,婴儿就会把哭闹与食物的出现联系起来,因此,一旦感到饥饿,他就会哭闹,以获得满足感。这标志着学习过程的开始,或许也标志着人格发展的开始。

The drives that a baby inherits are urges to satisfy basic needs such as those for sleep or food. When these are not satisfied, they are felt as tension or discomfort. These drives provide the stimulus for learning. One of the most powerful of human drives is hunger. To satisfy hunger, a baby depends on its mother’s breast or a bottle. But when it becomes hungry, nourishment is not always present, and as its discomfort increases, the baby cries. This may bring the breast or the bottle and with it the pleasure that is felt as hunger is satisfied. Before long, the baby associates crying with the appearance of the nourishment, and so it cries as soon as hunger begins in order to bring the satisfaction. This illustrates the beginning of the learning process and perhaps also the beginning of the development of personality.

心理学家 BF 斯金纳在该领域进行了广泛的研究,他非常强调社会对个人的影响。他认为个人的性格很大程度上是由条件作用塑造的。他认为,操作性条件作用可以改变个人的行为——通过行为(操作者)改变个人的习惯,而这些行为本身会对影响个人的环境产生可观察的影响。操作性条件作用通常从正强化、负强化惩罚三个方面来讨论。强化行为的程序称为强化;抑制行为的程序称为惩罚。强化和惩罚有两种类型,如表 7.1所示。

B. F. Skinner, a psychologist who did extensive research in this area, strongly emphasized the influence of society on the individual. He saw individuals’ personalities shaped in large part by conditioning. He believed that individuals’ behaviors could be changed by operant conditioning—altering individuals’ habits by behaviors (operants) that themselves have an observable effect on the environment affecting an individual. Operant conditioning often is discussed in terms of positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, and punishment. Procedures that strengthen behavior are called reinforcement; those that suppress behavior are called punishment. There are two types of reinforcement and two types of punishment, as outlined in Table 7.1.

需要注意的是,惩罚不同于负强化。如果你超速行驶并收到超速罚单,你会受到正惩罚。然而,如果法官让你选择参加驾驶培训课程或吊销驾照,那就是负强化的例子。你参加培训课程是为了避免更糟糕的结果——吊销驾照。总而言之,正强化和负强化都是强化行为的程序。正惩罚和负惩罚都是削弱行为的程序。

It is important to note that punishment is not the same as negative reinforcement. If you speed and get a speeding ticket, you experience a positive punishment. If, however, the judge offers you the choice of attending a driver education class or losing your license, that’s an example of negative reinforcement. You attend the class to avoid a worse alternative—losing your license. To summarize, positive and negative reinforcement are both procedures that strengthen behavior. Positive and negative punishment are both procedures that weaken behavior.

强化和惩罚对人格的影响使个体面临一些艰难的选择。例如,父母应该安慰还是忽视一个哭闹的孩子?安慰会强化不良的哭闹行为;另一方面,忽视可能会让孩子感到不被爱,并对孩子的成长产生不良影响。

The effects of reinforcement and punishment on personality leave individuals with some hard choices. For example, should parents console or ignore a crying child? Consoling can reinforce undesirable crying behavior; on the other hand, ignoring might make the child feel unloved and have an undesirable influence on the child’s development.

为了验证他的理论,斯金纳对老鼠和兔子等实验动物进行了大量的研究。他和他的追随者已经证明,动物可以被训练去做一些事情,比如推杆以获取食物或水。这类实验总体上没有争议(除非实验直接伤害动物)。但当斯金纳的理论扩展到人类以及人类的学习方式时,可能会引起争议。

Skinner did extensive work with laboratory animals such as rats and rabbits to test his theories. He and his adherents have shown that animals can be taught to do things such as push on a bar to receive food or water. Such laboratory work is, on the whole, non-controversial (except when the experiments directly harm animals). But when Skinner’s theories are extended to humans and to the way humans learn, they can be controversial.

一些研究人员过于强调惩罚和强化的影响,以至于他们的理论几乎没有空间容纳任何其他人格决定因素。此外,他们还从这些理论中衍生出许多教育和颇具争议的康复计划建议。例如,斯金纳学派开发了程序化的文本,为学生提供快速的正强化。此外,一些性犯罪者可能会接受康复计划,该计划规定,每当他们看到性唤起的图片时,就会受到电击(正惩罚),旨在改变他们的行为。

Some researchers have emphasized the influence of punishment and reinforcement so strongly that little room remains in their theories for any other determinants of personality. Moreover, they have derived from these theories a number of proposals for education and controversial rehabilitation programs. For example, Skinnerians developed programmed texts that provide fast positive reinforcement for students. Also, some sex criminals may submit themselves to a rehabilitation program in which whenever they are shown sexually arousing pictures, they experience an electric shock (positive punishment) designed to modify their behavior.

斯金纳强调环境在塑造人格方面的作用,但这一观点遭到许多心理学家的质疑,他们更强调遗传的作用,即特征从父母遗传给后代。双方之间的争论通常被称为

Skinner’s emphasis on the environment’s role in shaping personality is disputed by many psychologists who emphasize instead the role of heredity, the genetic transmission of characteristics from parent to offspring. The debate between the two sides has often been called the

表 7.1 惩罚和强化的类型
程序 刺激事件 效果 示例
正强化 施加理想的刺激 加强刺激发生之前的反应 称赞
负强化 失去不良刺激 增强逃避刺激的反应 因表现良好而出狱
积极的惩罚 施加不良刺激 削弱刺激发生之前的反应 超速罚单
负面惩罚 失去理想的刺激 减弱导致刺激丧失的反应 “暂停”

©科学历史图片/Alamy Stock Photo

© Science History Images/Alamy Stock Photo

先天与后天之争。先天与后天之争的焦点在于,在决定一个人的性格和人生成就方面,遗传和环境哪个更重要。这就像问:“汽车行驶时,汽油和发动机哪个更重要?” 显然,汽车要行驶,汽油和发动机缺一不可。同样,婴儿要正常发育,必须拥有合理的生物遗传和合理的社会环境。

nature/nurture debate. The nature/nurture debate focuses on whether heredity or environment is more important in determining the personality and the success in the life of an individual. It is like asking, “Which is more important in making an automobile run—the gasoline or the engine?” Quite obviously, if the car is to run at all, both gasoline and an engine must be provided. Likewise, if a baby is to develop normally, it must have both a reasonably adequate biological inheritance and a reasonably adequate social environment.

如果我们能以某种方式将两个相同的个体置于不同的环境中,我们就能回答这个问题。然而,没有两个人的生理结构完全相同(即使是同卵双胞胎也会有一些细微的差异),也没有两个人拥有完全相同的环境背景。因此,研究人员必须专注于研究人群,以确定遗传和环境哪个更重要。

If we could somehow take two identical individuals and place them in different environments, we could answer the question. However, no two people are physiologically identical (even identical twins have some slight differences), and no two people have the same environmental background. Instead, researchers must concentrate on groups of people to determine whether heredity or environment is more important.

然而,人们一直在尝试确定遗传和环境的相对重要性。其中一个例子就是关于人们性取向的研究。研究人员试图通过研究具有相同基因构成的同卵双胞胎和基因构成不同的异卵双胞胎的选择,来确定人们的选择是由先天决定还是后天决定。这些研究都发现,这些选择既源于先天,也源于后天;通常,研究人员将大约三分之一的因果关系归因于遗传,三分之二归因于环境。然而,研究人员提醒说,这些结果仍处于初步阶段,大多数研究人员认为两者密不可分,先天因素为后天因素奠定了基础。还有其他研究。布鲁克大学的安东尼·博加特发现,有哥哥的男孩比没有哥哥的男孩更容易成为同性恋,而且兄弟越多,成为同性恋的概率就越高。然而,继兄弟的情况并非如此,所以原因更可能是先天因素而非后天因素。他推测这与男孩母亲产生的抗体有关,这些抗体会影响未来孩子的性取向。

There have, however, been attempts to determine the relative importance of heredity and environment. An example of the research involved people’s sexual choices. Researchers have attempted to determine whether peoples choices are determined by nature or nurture by studying the choices of identical twins, who have the same genetic makeup, and fraternal twins, who do not. These studies have all found that these choices stem from both nature and nurture; generally the researchers have attributed roughly one-third of the causation to genetics and two-thirds to environment. Researchers caution, however, that these results are still preliminary, and most researchers see the two as inextricably linked, with nature setting the scene for nurture. There are other studies as well. Anthony Bogaert of Brock University found that boys with older brothers had a higher probability of being gay than those without, and that the more brothers one had, the higher the probability of being gay. That was not the case for stepbrothers, however, so the reason is more likely nature than nurture. He hypothesized that it had something to do with antibodies developed by the mother of boys that affect the sexual orientation of future children.

最近,研究人员针对肥胖问题进行了一项先天/后天因素的测试。研究对象为被领养儿童,提出的问题是:这些孩子更像他们的亲生父母(先天)还是养父母(后天)。研究发现,肥胖的亲生父母的孩子更容易肥胖。养父母的肥胖对他们的影响很小。在这种情况下,先天因素似乎比后天因素更重要。

Recently, a test of the nature/nurture question was conducted with respect to obesity. The population studied consisted of adopted children, and the question posed was: Would the children resemble their biological (nature) or their adoptive (nurture) parents? In this study, it was found that children of obese biological parents tended to be obese. The obesity of the adopted parents had little effect. In this case, nature seems more important than nurture.

近期关于先天与后天之争的讨论往往侧重于强调两者之间复杂的相互作用。例如,智力的遗传性指标会随着年龄的增长而上升,从儿童时期的40%上升到成年时期的60%。新西兰心理学家詹姆斯·弗林认为,原因在于出生时智力的细微差异会导致照料者以不同的方式对待孩子:看似更聪明的孩子在学习中会得到更强烈的强化,而看似不那么聪明的孩子则会受到负面强化。正如我们在第二章中所讨论的,表观遗传学领域(研究由基因表达而非基因本身引起的基因功能改变)的最新研究,使得后天因素能够反哺于此前被认为是先天因素的因素。总而言之:后天因素和先天因素错综复杂地相互关联,以至于几乎不可能明确区分两者。

Recent discussions of the nature/nurture debate have tended to emphasize the complex interaction between the two. For example, measures of the inheritability of intelligence rise with age, from 40 percent in childhood to 60 percent in adulthood. James Flynn, a psychologist in New Zealand, suggests the reason is that a slight difference in intelligence at birth leads caregivers to treat children differently, with the seemingly brighter child being more strongly reinforced in learning, while the seemingly less bright child receives negative reinforcement. As we discussed in Chapter 2, recent work in the field of epigenetics—the study of modification in gene functions caused by the expression of genes, not the genes themselves—allows nurture to feed back into what was previously considered nature. The bottom line: nurture and nature are so intricately interconnected that there is little hope in definitively distinguishing the two.

行为解释

Explanations of Behavior

先天与后天之争是心理学中关于如何更好地理解行为的更大争论的一部分。我们总结了四种一般方法:

The nature/nurture debate is part of a larger debate in psychology about how best to understand behavior. We distinguish four general approaches:

  1. 认知方法关注自然;它将思想视为行为的发起者和决定因素。在这种方法中,人类行为代表着对大脑中物理过程的反应,而认知科学——一门研究心智的科学——则被用来解释行为。
  2. The cognitive approach focuses on nature; it sees thought as the initiator and determinant of behavior. In this approach, human actions represent reactions to physical processes in the brain, and cognitive science—the scientific study of the mind—is looked to for explanations of behavior.
  3. 精神分析方法也关注自然,但它并不依赖认知科学。相反,它采取了一种更神秘的方法,关注人类某些先天倾向。最著名的精神分析方法是弗洛伊德的,我们将在本章后面讨论。弗洛伊德的方法关注潜意识及其与意识思维和行为的关系。除了弗洛伊德的方法之外,精神分析方法还衍生出多种治疗方法,其中之一就是阿尔伯特·埃利斯的“理性情绪疗法”,稍后也会讨论。
  4. The psychoanalytic approach also focuses on nature, but it does not look to cognitive science. Rather, it takes a more mystical approach, focusing on certain innate tendencies of people. The most well-known of the psychoanalytic approaches is Freuds, which we discuss later in this chapter. Freud’s approach focuses on the unconscious and its relation to conscious thoughts and actions. The psychoanalytic approach has produced a variety of therapeutic approaches besides that of Freud, one of which is Albert Ellis’s “rational emotive therapy,” also discussed later.
  5. 行为主义方法关注的是行为,而非思想。BF·斯金纳是这种方法的倡导者。行为主义方法最近又增加了一种新方法——我们不妨称之为生物心理学方法。这种方法既源于生物学,也源于心理学,它将行为简单地视为对身体化学刺激的反应(尽管其基础通常没有如此直白地阐述)。在这种方法中,人们认为一个人的基因结构决定了其行为的范围;而化学信使则决定了该范围内的具体行为。心智则被视为物质世界的一部分。
  6. The behavioralist approach focuses on actions, not thoughts. B. F. Skinner was an advocate of this approach. The behavioralist approach has a recent addition—what might be called the biopsychological approach. Flowing from biology as much as it does from psychology, this approach views behavior simply as responses to chemical stimuli in the body (although its basis often is not put so bluntly). In this approach, one’s genetic structure is believed to determine the ranges of behavior one will display; the chemical messengers determine specific behaviors within that general range. The mind is seen as just another part of the physical world.
  7. 人文主义方法强调人的整体性及其与文化的相互关系。亚伯拉罕·马斯洛的著作(稍后讨论)就是这种人文主义方法的一个例子。
  8. The humanist approach emphasizes the entire person and his or her interrelationship with culture. Abraham Maslow’s work, discussed later, is an example of this humanist approach.

这些方法并非相互矛盾,最近,一群强调综合方法(认知行为主义方法)的治疗师正在逐渐兴起。认知行为主义方法强调思想可以成为“心智的运作者”。因此,关注思想的认知方法向关注行为的行为主义分析敞开了大门。

These approaches are not mutually inconsistent, and recently a group of therapists emphasizing a combination approach—a cognitive behavioralist approach—have been gaining ground. The cognitive behavioralist approach emphasizes that thoughts can be “operants of the mind.” Thus, cognitive approaches focusing on thought are opened up to behavioralist analyses focusing on behavior.

在我们继续讨论这些不同的方法如何导致对适应不良的不同治疗之前,让我们简要考虑一下亚伯拉罕·马斯洛的适应良好个体理论和弗洛伊德的人格概念,以便让您更好地了解不同方法可能导致的差异。

Before we move on to discuss how these different approaches lead to different treatments of maladjustment, let us briefly consider Abraham Maslow’s theory of the well-adjusted individual and Freuds conception of the personality to give you a little better idea of the differences to which varying approaches can lead.

适应良好的人

The Well-Adjusted Individual

关于健康人格发展最著名的理论或许是亚伯拉罕·马斯洛的理论,即马斯洛层次理论。马斯洛层次理论指出,人类的成就分为五个等级,必须先满足每个等级,才能尝试下一个等级。如图7.2所示。

Probably the most famous theory of the development of a healthy personality is that of Abraham Maslow, known as Maslow’s hierarchy. Maslow’s hierarchy states that there are five levels of human achievement, each of which must be satisfied before the next is attempted. They are shown in Figure 7.2.

图7.2亚伯拉罕·马斯洛的层次结构。

Figure 7.2Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy.

马斯洛认为,自我实现是指一个人能够很好地适应现实的人类成就水平,是人所能达到的最高境界。一个人无需名声显赫,或成为领域顶尖人物,即可实现自我实现。相反,当我们对生活感到满足,并有能力应对我们所有人都必须面对的问题时,我们才算实现了自我实现。由于我们必须先满足层级结构中的每个层级,才能尝试下一个层级,因此很少有人能够达到自我实现;即使对于那些达到最高层级的人来说,也需要不断努力才能保持现状,不回落。

Self-actualization, the level of human achievement in which one is well adjusted to one’s reality, is the highest level one can reach, according to Maslow. A person need not be famous, or the best in the field, in order to be self-actualized. Rather, we are self-actualized when content with life and capable of handling the problems that all of us must face. Because each level of the hierarchy must be satisfied before the next can be attempted, few of us reach self-actualization; even for those few who attain that highest level, it is a constant effort to stay there and not slide back down.

我们所说的良好的社会适应究竟是什么意思?将社会适应设定为一种理想状态是有风险的。如果一个人完美地适应了环境,没有任何问题或压力,也不希望任何事发生改变,那么这个人就会停滞不前。另一方面,如果我们所说的“适应良好”是指热爱生活并发现生活的人一个人如果想有趣又刺激,就必须有不满、有待解决的问题、有待实现的目标。良好的调整必须是一个动态的概念,没有一个适用于所有人的简单公式。

What do we mean by good social adjustment? There are dangers in setting up social adjustment as an ideal to be sought. If an individual were perfectly adjusted to the environment in the sense of having no problems or tensions and not wishing that anything were different, that person would stagnate. On the other hand, if we mean by a well-adjusted person, someone who loves life and finds it interesting and stimulating, that person must have dissatisfactions, problems to be dealt with, and goals to be achieved. Good adjustment must be a dynamic concept, and there is no simple formula for it that will apply equally well to everyone.

真正适应良好的人会形成坚强而平衡的性格,能够承受不幸并从中恢复。需要强调的是,失望、痛苦和悲伤是人生中常见的经历,我们每个人都会时不时地遇到。适应良好的人能够应对这些,而不会被压垮。

The truly well-adjusted person has developed a strong and balanced personality that can suffer misfortunes and recover from them. It should be emphasized that disappointment, pain, and grief are common experiences of life that come to all of us from time to time. The well-adjusted person can deal with these without being crushed.

大量研究已深入探讨了遗传因素对适应性的影响。在一项研究中,心理学家戴维·莱肯和奥克·特勒根调查了732对同卵双胞胎,发现无论周围环境如何,他们的幸福感都是一样的。另一项研究进一步证实了这一发现,发现一个人的实际处境与其获得的满足感几乎没有关联。例如,尽管日本人比中国人富裕十倍,但中国人在主观幸福感方面却比日本人更幸福。

Much research has gone into studying the genetic component of adjustment. In one study, psychologists David Lykken and Auke Tellegen surveyed 732 pairs of identical twins and found that their level of happiness was the same regardless of their surroundings. Another study reinforced this finding and discovered that the actual circumstances a person experiences have little to do with the satisfaction that person experiences. For example, people in China were happier in measures of subjective well-being than people in Japan, even though people in Japan were ten times richer.

宾夕法尼亚大学心理学家马丁·塞利格曼在一本试图将所有这些想法汇总在一起的书中,试图解释这些发现对追求“美好生活”的人们意味着什么。他的其中一条建议让人理解他提出的想法。具体来说,他建议:保持幻想。例如,他认为幸福的夫妻——幸福地在一起的夫妻——不会客观地看待他们的伴侣,而是戴着有色眼镜看他或她,认为伴侣比实际上更好。然而,其他研究得出了不同的观点。例如,对悲观性格的人和乐观性格的人进行比较的研究发现,悲观性格的人比乐观性格的人更适应现实,压力更小。我们将这些想法的考虑留给您作为可选的研究项目;并且我们确信您会进行研究(尽管我们内心深处有疑虑),因为尽管我们潜在的性格是悲观的,但我们正努力成为乐观主义者,这是塞利格曼关于如何过上美好生活的另一个建议。

In a book that attempted to pull all these ideas together, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin Seligman tried to explain what these findings meant for people searching for the “good life.” One of his suggestions gives a sense of the ideas he raises. Specifically, he suggests: Keep your illusions. For example, he argues that happy couples—the couples who stay together happily—are ones who do not see their partner objectively, but instead see him or her through rose-colored glasses and think that the partner is better than he or she actually is. Other research, however, leads to different views. For example, research comparing people who have pessimistic personalities with people who have optimistic personalities found that those with pessimistic personalities are more attuned to reality and less stressed than people with optimistic personalities. We leave a consideration of these ideas to you as an optional research project; and we’re sure that you will do the research (even though deep down we have our doubts) because, although we have underlying pessimistic personalities, we are trying to be optimists, which is another of Seligman’s suggestions of how to have the good life.

调整与常态

Adjustment and Normality

良好的适应能力和正常性在应用于人格时含义并不完全相同,但它们之间的关系却很密切。相反,任何社会中的正常人必然是一个适应能力相当好的人。从文化角度来看,正常人是指已经充分掌握了该文化的基本态度和行为模式,并能被该群体接受和认可的人。在任何社会中,适应能力良好的人都可能被认为是正常人。这个正常人可能并非在所有方面都代表群体中的典型人或统计平均值,但正常人的行为绝不能偏离可接受的范围太远。文化规范由群体决定。在一种文化中很正常的行为类型,在另一种文化中可能被视为完全不正常。

Good adjustment and normality do not have precisely the same meaning when applied to personality, but their relationship is close. Conversely, a normal person in any society is necessarily a reasonably well-adjusted person. In cultural terms, a normal person is one who has acquired the basic attitudes and behavior patterns of the culture sufficiently well to be accepted and approved by the group. In any society, a well-adjusted person is likely to be recognized as a normal person. This normal person may not in all respects represent the typical person in the group, or the statistical average, but the normal person’s behavior must not deviate too far from what is acceptable. Cultural norms are determined by the group. Types of behavior that in one culture would be quite normal might in another culture be regarded as wholly abnormal.

弗洛伊德的人格概念

The Freudian Concept of Personality

心理学界最著名的人物或许是西格蒙德·弗洛伊德,他生于1856年至1939年,一生大部分时间在奥地利维也纳度过。他接受过医学培训,但专攻神经病学,这意味着当时他的大多数病人都是有情绪问题的人。

Probably the best-known name in psychology is Sigmund Freud, who lived from 1856 to 1939 and spent most of his life in Vienna, Austria. He was trained as a physician but specialized in neurology, and in those days this meant that most of his patients were people with emotional problems.

弗洛伊德因创立了精神分析这套心理治疗体系而闻名。精神分析是一种分析方法,其基础是探索梦境和与他人的不安关系中所表现出来的无意识心理过程。本质上,精神分析的方法就是自由联想法。病人被诱导表达脑海中浮现的任何事情,希望能够发现病人没有意识到但可能造成心理和情感冲突的记忆或想法。例如,也许童年时期的一次可怕经历被压抑在意识层面以下。精神分析师相信,如果能帮助病人回忆起这样的经历,病人就能现实地处理它,这样它所造成的心理困扰就会消失。但要将无意识的心理过程带到意识层面,需要精神分析师和病人双方的时间和毅力。

Freud became famous as the originator of the system of psychotherapy known as psychoanalysis, a method of analysis based on the exploration of unconscious mental processes as manifested in dreams and disturbed relationships with others. Essentially, the method of psychoanalysis is that of free association. A patient is induced to express anything that comes to mind in the hope of uncovering memories or ideas of which the patient is unaware but that may be causing mental and emotional conflicts. For example, perhaps a terrifying experience in early childhood has been repressed below the level of consciousness. The psychoanalyst believes that if the patient can be helped to recall such an experience, the patient will be able to deal with it realistically, so that the mental disturbances it has been causing will disappear. But to bring unconscious mental processes to the level of consciousness takes time and persistence on the part of both the psychoanalyst and the patient.

随着时间的推移,弗洛伊德被公认为心理学领域最伟大的原创思想家之一,今天大多数心理学家认为他对我们理解人类个性做出了重要贡献,但他的理论一直是争议的焦点。

In time, Freud became recognized as one of the great original thinkers in the field of psychology, and today most psychologists believe he made important contributions to our understanding of the human personality But his theories have been the center of much controversy.

本我、自我和超我 弗洛伊德认为,人格由三个主要系统或“结构”组成,他称之为本我、自我和超我。在正常人身上,这三个人格系统相互协作,使个体能够在特定环境中满足基本需求和欲望。但当它们彼此严重冲突时,就会导致各种精神障碍。

The Id, Ego, and Superego To Freud, personality consisted of three major systems or “structures,” which he called the id, the ego, and the superego. In the normal person, these three personality systems cooperate to enable the individual to satisfy basic needs and desires within an environmental setting, but when they are in serious conflict with one another, various mental disorders will result.

弗洛伊德认为,本我是我们人格中受快乐原则控制的部分。它受寻求快乐和避免痛苦的目标驱动。它是我们人格中不成熟、自私的一面。与之对应的是超我,是我们的原始良知,它会随着我们年龄的增长而发展,并且完全受我们的道德观念引导。人格的第三个主要结构是自我——最直接控制行为、最接触外部现实的人格组成部分——它在其他两个系统之间起着裁判的作用,有时允许我们寻求快乐,有时则允许超我引导我们采取更严格的行为。当然,本我、自我和超我并不是独立的实体。相反,它们是指代在人类人格中相互作用的不同力量群体的方便术语。

According to Freud, the id is the part of our personality controlled by the pleasure principle. It is driven by the goals to seek pleasure and avoid pain. It is the immature, selfish side of our personalities. Its counterpart, the superego, is our primitive conscience, which develops as we grow older and is guided solely by our morals. The third major structure of the personality is the ego—the personality component that most immediately controls behavior and is most in touch with external reality—which plays referee between the other two systems, sometimes allowing us to seek pleasure, at other times allowing the superego to guide us to more restrictive behavior. The id, ego, and superego are, of course, not independent entities. Rather, they are convenient terms to designate different groups of forces that interact within the human personality.

防御机制弗洛伊德心理学的众多理论中,防御机制是其中之一,指的是个体为了逃避问题而采取的行为。这些行为包括:

Defense Mechanisms Among the many elements of Freud’s psychology are defense mechanisms—behaviors that individuals use to avoid facing issues. These include:

  • 转移愤怒,将愤怒从真正的目标转移到无辜的目标。例如,一个沮丧的工人踢了他的狗。
  • Displacement, in which one redirects one’s anger away from the real target and toward an innocent target. For example, a frustrated worker kicks his dog.
  • 反应形成,指个体将引起焦虑的冲动与被过分强调的反面联系起来。例如,那些无意识地被同性吸引的人可能会对同性恋产生强烈的仇恨。
  • Reaction formation, in which an individual connects an anxiety-causing impulse with an overemphasized opposite. For example, people who are unconsciously attracted to the same sex may develop an intense hatred of gays.
  • 投射,将自身不可接受的冲动归咎于他人。例如,受外遇诱惑的配偶会过度怀疑自己的伴侣。
  • Projection, in which unacceptable urges in oneself are attributed to others. For example, a spouse tempted to have an affair becomes unduly suspicious of his or her partner.
  • 合理化,指为自己的缺点找借口。比如,你考试不及格,辍学了,你会说反正一切都很无聊,你更喜欢做些动手活,而不是脑力劳动。
  • Rationalization, in which one gives excuses for one’s shortcomings. For example, after you fail an exam and flunk out of school, you say it was all boring anyhow, and you prefer doing active, not mental, work.
  • 幻想,指人们通过生活在幻想世界来逃避现实的烦恼。比如,你不学习,而是整天幻想着自己因为不学习而永远无法获得一份好工作。
  • Fantasy, in which one avoids one’s real worries by living in a fantasy world. For example, you don’t study but rather spend all daydreaming of the great job you will never get because you didn’t study.
  • 升华,将不可接受的需求转化为可接受的抱负。你努力学习,因为你讨厌教科书作者愚蠢的幽默感。
  • Sublimation, in which one transforms an unacceptable need into an acceptable ambition. You study hard because you hate the textbook author’s stupid sense of humor.

© www.cartoonstock.com

© www.cartoonstock.com

防御机制包括我们都不同程度遵循的其他行为,但此列表应该能让您很好地了解防御机制的含义。

Defense mechanisms include other behaviors that we all follow to varying degrees, but this list should give you a good idea of what is meant by defense mechanisms.

俄狄浦斯情结 弗洛伊德著作中最为人熟知的或许是俄狄浦斯情结——一种儿童对异性父母的性吸引力——之所以如此命名,是因为它与希腊神话中的俄狄浦斯相似,俄狄浦斯在不知情的情况下弑父娶母。弗洛伊德对俄狄浦斯情结的阐述源于这样一个事实:在他职业生涯的早期,他相信自己在神经症患者的潜意识心理过程中发现了与异性父母发生性关系的幻想,以及对同性父母的嫉妒和愤怒。后来,他开始相信,对异性父母的强烈性吸引力,以及

The Oedipus Complex Probably the bestknown aspect of Freud’s work is the Oedipus complex—a child’s sexual attraction to the parent of the opposite sex—so called because of its analogy to the Greek myth about Oedipus, the man who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother. Freud’s formulation of the Oedipus complex grew out of the fact that rather early in his career he believed he had uncovered, in the unconscious mental processes of his neurotic patients, fantasies of sexual relations with the parent of the opposite sex, combined with jealous anger against the parent of the same sex. Later he came to believe that a strong sexual attraction to the parent of the opposite sex, along with

对另一方父母的嫉妒,是五岁前儿童普遍存在的经历。五岁之后,由于意识到性欲无法满足,俄狄浦斯情结被压抑并从意识中消失;对于男孩来说,这还源于对父亲报复的恐惧。在这个阶段,孩子开始认同同性的父母。弗洛伊德认为,俄狄浦斯情结是每个孩子人格发展的重要因素,因此也决定了所有人类社会的性质。

jealousy of the other parent, is a universal experience of childhood in the years before the age of five. After this period, the Oedipus complex is repressed and disappears from the conscious mind because of recognition of the impossibility of fulfilling the sexual wishes; also, in the case of a boy, because of fear of retaliation from the father. At this stage, the child begins to identify with the parent of the same sex. Freud believed that the Oedipus complex was an essential factor in the development of every child’s personality and hence in determining the nature of all human societies.

菲尔博士通过探讨人们的心理问题来提供娱乐。 © CBS/Allstar Picture Library Ltd./Alamy Stock Photo

Dr. Phil provides entertainment by discussing people’s psychological problems. © CBS/Allstar Picture Library Ltd./Alamy Stock Photo

俄狄浦斯情结广为人知,但也招致了广泛的反对。许多人难以接受弗洛伊德提出的俄狄浦斯情结。他明确指出,俄狄浦斯情结指的是孩子对与异性父母发生性关系的明确渴望,以及因这种性关系而对另一方父母的嫉妒。但在我们的社会中,大多数幼儿似乎对性关系的存在或性质只有模糊的概念,这一点令人怀疑。当然,许多幼儿没有这种概念,在这种情况下,很难理解他们如何渴望性关系或因此而嫉妒。许多认同弗洛伊德大部分理论的精神分析学家质疑或拒绝了弗洛伊德的俄狄浦斯情结理论。

The Oedipus complex received much publicity and aroused widespread opposition. Many people found it difficult to accept in the form in which Freud presented it. He made it clear that the Oedipus complex referred to a definite desire of the child for sexual relations with the parent of the opposite sex, and to jealousy of the other parent because of the sexual relationship, but in our society it seems doubtful that most very young children have even a vague concept of the existence or nature of sexual relations. Certainly many do not, and in that case it is hard to see how they can desire sexual relations or be jealous on account of them. Numerous psychoanalysts who subscribe to most of Freuds theories question or reject Freuds theory of the Oedipus complex.

最近,进化生物学家 Randolphe Nesse 对心理健康问题有了不同的看法,并建议我们将其视为进化特征。他的建议是,我们不应该根据症状来定义精神问题(例如抑郁症)(就像《精神疾病诊断和统计手册》那样),而应该根据这些所谓的障碍来定义它们。障碍可能服务于必要的目的,例如让人们知道他们的目标很可能对他们造成危险,他们应该重新考虑这些目标。有时,这些反应可能在进化上已经过时,但并非总是如此。试图将某些精神状态视为可通过药物或基因疗法治疗的障碍可能会缺少重要的见解,需要重新思考。

More recently, Randolphe Nesse, an evolutionary biologist, has taken a different look at mental health problems, and has suggested that we consider them as evolutionary traits. What he is suggesting is that instead of defining a mental problem, such as depression, by its symptoms (as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders does), these so-called disorders should be defined by their context. Disorders may serve a needed purpose, such as letting people know that they have goals that are very likely to be dangerous to them and that they should reconsider those goals. Sometimes, these reactions maybe evolutionary obsolete, but not always, Attempting to treat some mental states as disorders treatable by drugs on gene therapy can be missing important insights and needs to be rethought.

流行心理学

Pop Psychologies

现代科学心理学与所谓的流行心理学相辅相成,流行心理学将更科学的理论进行翻译和消化,使其为大众所接受。其中一种翻译是沟通分析(TA),它在某些方面与弗洛伊德的理论相似。该理论因托马斯·A·哈里斯的畅销书《我很好,你也很好》而闻名,它将人格分为三个“部分”——父母、成人和儿童——这与弗洛伊德的超我、自我和本我概念大致相符。根据TA,当两个人互动时,他们必须使用相同的人格模式(最好是成人的语气)。当一个人试图用父母模式来应对另一个人的儿童模式,而接收者却用成人的语气思考时,信息就会产生混淆,导致受挫。

Modern scientific psychology is supplemented by what might be called pop psychology, in which the more scientific theories are translated and digested, making them available for popular consumption. One such translation is transactional analysis, or TA, which in some respects is similar to Freuds theories. It was made famous by Thomas A. Harris’s best-selling book I’m O.K., You’re O.K., and it breaks down the human personality into three “parts”—parent, adult, and child—which roughly coincide with the superego, ego, and id of Freud. According to TA, when two people interact, they must be using the same mode of personality (preferably the adult voice). When one person’s parent mode attempts to address another person’s child mode, but the receiver is thinking in the adult voice, confusion of the message and frustration result.

其他流行理论包括ESP(超感知觉)、尖叫理论和通灵术。近年来,一些流行心理学家在电视节目中声名鹊起,他们的节目邀请有问题的人,然后心理学家与他们一起“解决”问题。电视名人菲尔博士就是一个例子。批评者声称,他的建议充其量是过于简单,更糟糕的是无效。无论如何,在节目出名后,他“退休”了他的心理学执照,以明确表明该节目涉及的是“娱乐”而非严肃的心理学。

Other pop theories include ESP (extrasensory perception), scream theory, and channeling. More recently, pop psychologists have become famous on TV, with shows bringing in people with problems, and then the psychologist working with them to “solve” the problems. The TV notable, Dr. Phil, is an example. Critics claim that his advice is at best simplistic, and at worse, ineffective. Whichever it is, he “retired” his psychology license once the show became famous in order to make it very clear that the show involves “entertainment” rather than serious psychology.

智力、个人适应和常态

Intelligence, Personal Adjustment, and Normality

在我们继续讨论各种心理学理论所得出的一些方法之前,让我们先来思考一下智力及其在决定个人适应和正常性方面的作用。虽然这个话题与个人适应并无直接关系,但它是一个经常引起混淆的重要话题。

Before we move on to discuss some of the approaches various psychological theories lead to, let us consider the issue of intelligence and its role in determining personal adjustment and normality. Although this subject is not directly related to personal adjustment, it is an important topic that often causes confusion.

在每个人类社会中,个体的智力各不相同。智力是指一个人理解自身所处境况并做出令人满意的调整的能力,这种调整依赖于学习和思考。低智力阻碍了一些人对自身环境做出充分的适应。但直到近几十年,人们才开始系统地努力定义和测量智力或其他心理品质。

In every human society, individuals have varied intelligence, which is the ability of a person to understand the situations that confront him or her and to make satisfactory adjustments to them insofar as such adjustments depend on learning and thinking. Low intelligence has prevented some people from making an adequate adjustment to their environment. But only in recent decades have systematic efforts been made to define and measure intelligence or other mental qualities.

心理测试

Mental Tests

心理测试旨在发现或测量个体的心理特征。最早的心理测试之一出现在希腊神话中。根据故事,在特洛伊战争期间,一位名叫尤利西斯的希腊人对政府的征兵令置之不理。当局派人前来探望他,发现他正在耕田撒盐。为了确定他是否在装疯卖傻,他们把尤利西斯的独子放在犁地的路上。尤利西斯迅速转身,测试结果被认为是他神志清醒的确凿证据。

Mental tests are intended to discover or to measure the mental characteristics of an individual. One of the earliest mental tests is described in Greek mythology. During the Trojan War, according to the story, a Greek named Ulysses paid no attention to the government’s call to arms. The authorities visited him and found him plowing up the beach and sowing salt. Determined to see whether he was pretending to be insane, they placed Ulysses’s only son in the plow’s path. Ulysses quickly turned aside, and the test was deemed conclusive proof that he was sane.

现代心理测试基于这样的假设:我们可以通过专门设计的、包含类似条件的测试来预测个体在各种情境下的反应。此外,我们假设,通过向个体提供大量不同的样本情境,我们就能评估其能力与其他人相比如何。

Modern mental tests are based on the assumption that we can predict the reactions of an individual in various situations by giving specially designed tests in which similar conditions are involved. Furthermore, we assume that by presenting an individual with a large variety of sample situations, we can estimate how that person’s abilities compare with those of other people.

心理学家使用各种类型的测试来确定个体的特征。一种测试试图衡量一般智力能力,这被称为智力测试。另一种测试通过提出各种假设选择并要求受试者表达偏好来探索个体的基本兴趣。第三种测试旨在衡量个体从事某些工作的能力。第四种测试被称为成就测试,本质上是测试个体学习某些技能或吸收某些知识的程度。第五种测试旨在发现特殊能力或残疾,通常针对残疾儿童或成人。最后,心理学家使用的第六种测试试图确定个体的性格结构和基本情感需求,这种测试被称为性格测试或情绪适应测试。

Psychologists employ various types of tests to determine the characteristics of an individual. One type attempts to measure general intellectual ability; this is known as an intelligence test. Another type explores the individual’s basic interests by presenting various hypothetical choices and asking the subject to express preferences. A third type is intended to measure aptitudes for certain kinds of work. A fourth is known as a test of achievement and is essentially a test of how well certain skills have been learned or certain kinds of knowledge have been assimilated. A fifth is intended to discover special abilities or disabilities and is generally given to children or adults with disabilities. Finally, a sixth type of test used by psychologists tries to determine the individual’s personality structure and basic emotional needs. This type of test is known as a personality, or emotional adjustment, test.

所有这些测试都被临床心理学家用来诊断个体在特定发展阶段所拥有的力量和潜力。基于这些测试,心理学家能够了解个人的心理困难并判断帮助个人克服这些困难的可能性。

All these tests are used by clinical psychologists to diagnose the power and potentialities of the individual as they exist at any given stage of development. On the basis of such tests, psychologists are able to learn something about the mental difficulties of an individual and judge the possibilities of helping the individual to overcome them.

心理年龄与智商最著名的心理测试是智商(IQ),即一般智力测试,它试图将智力的诸多维度简化为一个数字,以此来估算一个人的心理年龄。为此,研究人员设计了各种各样的测试题,从简单到复杂,并按难度排序。然后,他们在大量不同年级的儿童身上试用了这些题。根据经验,他们为每个题分配一个心理年龄值。他们根据不同年龄段分配问题或难题的程序如下:如果某个题型在八岁儿童中,有多达65%到75%的正确率,而八岁以下儿童中正确率较低,则该题型被认为是八岁儿童的智力测试。然后,他们将几个难度合适的题型(通常为五个)分组,用于测试每个年龄段的儿童。如果一个孩子能够回答八岁及以上所有年龄段的问题,但无法回答八岁及以上年龄段的问题,则无论其实际年龄或实际年龄如何,心理年龄都被认为是八岁。但孩子实际回答的问题会获得相应的分数。例如,如果孩子能回答所有八岁儿童的问题,并能回答五分之三九岁儿童的问题,那么他的心理年龄就被认为是8.6。如果孩子还能回答五分之二十岁儿童的问题,那么他的心理年龄就被认为是9岁。

Mental Age and the IQ The best-known psychological test is the IQ, or general intelligence test, which attempts to reduce the many dimensions of intelligence to a single number that estimates a person’s mental age. To do this, researchers devised a wide variety of test items, from the simple to the complex, and arranged them in order of difficulty They then tried these items out on a large number of children at various grade levels. On the basis of this experience, they assigned a mental-age value to each item. Their procedure in assigning questions or problems to various ages was as follows: If a certain item was responded to correctly by as many as 65 to 75 percent of the children whose age was, say, eight years, but by a smaller percentage of children below that age, it was considered a test of eight-year-old intelligence. They then grouped several items of appropriate difficulty, usually five, to test children of each age. If a child could answer the questions for all levels up through those for eight-year-olds, but none of those for the years above that, mental age was considered to be eight regardless of actual or chronological age. But the child received proportionate credit for any questions actually answered. For example, if the child could answer all the questions for eight-year-olds, and three out of five of those for nine-year-olds, mental age was considered 8.6. If the child could also answer two out of five of the questions for age ten, a mental age of nine was assigned.

后来,其他心理学家改进了这项技术,使每个心理年包含十二个心理月。例如,每个测试题可能代表两个心理月,这样六个测试题就代表一个心理年。这样,每个受试者每答对一个测试题,就能获得两个月的心理年龄积分。

Later, other psychologists refined the technique so that each mental year consisted of twelve mental months. For example, each test item might represent two mental months, in which case six items would represent a mental year. Each person tested would then receive two months’ credit toward a mental age for each item answered correctly.

一旦心理年龄的概念被发展出来,距离表达一个人的心理年龄与实际年龄之间的比率就只有一步之遥了。这个比率被称为智商(IQ),即智力商数——衡量一个人在测试中与其他人相比的智力水平的指标。智商的计算方法是将心理年龄除以实际年龄,然后将得到的分数乘以100。乘以100会将比率或分数表示为百分比,但通常不会在表示智商的数字后面加“百分比”。智商的计算公式如下:

Once the concept or mental age was developed, it was only a step to the notion or expressing a ratio between the mental age and the chronological age of an individual. This ratio was called the IQ, or intelligence quotient—an index of an individual’s tested mental ability as compared to the rest of the population. IQ is calculated by dividing mental age by actual age and multiplying the resulting fraction by 100. Multiplying by 100 expresses the ratio or fraction as a percentage, but it is not customary to write “percent” after the number expressing IQ. The formula for finding IQ may be written as follows:

智商 = 心理年龄/实际年龄 x 100 让我们看看这个公式在实际中是如何运作的。一个八岁的孩子,心理年龄是八岁,是一个普通的孩子。智商为 8/8 x 100 = 100。因此,显然智商 100 代表平均智力。如果一个八岁的孩子,智力测试显示心理年龄是十二岁,那么这个八岁孩子显然非常聪明。智商为 12/8 x 100 = 150。

IQ = Mental Age/Chronological Age x 100 Let us see how this formula works in practice. A child eight years old having a mental age of eight is an average child. IQ would be 8/8 x 100 =100. It is apparent, therefore, that an IQ of 100 represents average intelligence. If a child eight years old had a mental age of twelve, as indicated by an intelligence test, that eight-year-old would obviously be very bright. This would be indicated by IQ, which would be 12/8 x 100 = 150.

如今,人们通常的做法是给个人分配一个百分位等级,而不是智商。百分位等级是指将某个群体中的所有个体按能力从高到低的顺序排列,并将某个个体与其他个体进行比较后得出的排名。百分之一的百分位由该群体中得分最高的1%的人组成。百分之一的百分位由得分最低的1%的人组成。同样,百分之五十和百分之五十一的百分位由得分平均的人组成。图7.3显示了社会智商排名。

Today it is often the practice to assign an individual a percentile rank rather than an IQ. Percentile rank is a ranking of an individual with reference to other individuals in a certain group when all individuals in the group are ranked in order from the most capable to the least capable. The hundredth percentile consists of the 1 percent of the group who have made the highest scores. The first percentile consists of the 1 percent who have made the lowest scores. Similarly, the 50th and 51st percentiles consist of those who have made average scores. Figure 7.3 shows the IQ rankings for society.

心理测试表明,人类智力存在巨大差异。这一事实早已为人所知,但测试使我们的认知更加明确。尽管这类测试以及其他心理测试在学校、政府和商界的应用比以往任何时候都更加广泛,但由于测试中存在文化偏见,它们也受到越来越多的批评。然而,心理测试或许是我们目前比较大量个体智力水平的最佳方法。

Mental tests indicate that great differences exist in intelligence in our population. This fact has long been known, but tests have made our knowledge more definite. Though these and other psychological tests are used more widely than ever before in schools, in government, and in business, they are also subjected to increasing criticism because of cultural biases in the tests. Nevertheless, mental tests are probably the best means we have for comparing the mental powers of large numbers of individuals.

智商测试和其他测试的局限性许多早期的实验者认为,他们设计的测试不依赖于后天习得的知识,而本质上是对先天或遗传心理能力的衡量。因此,他们认为个体在此类测试中的得分不会受到任何普通环境差异的影响。然而,各种研究和实验已毫无疑问地证明,家庭环境和学校教育等因素可能会对个体在标准智力测试中的得分产生重大影响。例如,如果同卵双胞胎早年分开,并在不同类型的家庭中长大,由社会、经济和文化背景优越的父母抚养长大的双胞胎,其父母的得分会更高。教育状况较好的一方在智力测试中几乎总是比另一方表现更好,有时这种差异还相当大。

Limitations of IQ and Other Tests Many of the early experimenters believed they had devised tests that did not depend on acquired knowledge but were essentially a measure of innate or inherited mental ability. Hence, they thought the scores of individuals on such tests could not be affected by any ordinary differences in environment. However, various studies and experiments have demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that factors such as differences in family environment and schooling may have a substantial effect on the scores individuals make on standard intelligence tests. For example, when identical twins are separated early and reared in different types of homes, the twin reared by parents of superior social, economic, and educational status almost invariably does better on an intelligence test than the other member of the pair, and sometimes the difference is fairly substantial.

图7.3不同智商分组的儿童的百分比。

Figure 7.3Percentage of children at different IQ groupings.

另一个例子是,人们在进入高中 30 年后参加同一项测试,他们的得分与他们在这段时间内所受的教育程度直接相关。哈佛大学的罗伯特·罗森塔尔和旧金山小学校长莱诺·雅各布森的研究表明,智商测试绝对可靠的另一个弱点是他们成功地让一组老师相信某些学生很有天赋。根据发表该研究成果的《课堂上的卖花女》一书,这些实际上是随机挑选的学生超越了他们的同学,成为了高水平的成就者。这些“更聪明”的学生在年初和年末的成就测试中平均提高了 12.22 分,而他们的同学只提高了 8.42 分。这两组学生之间的唯一区别在于老师如何回应他们的学习需求。

Another example is that people who take the same test thirty years after entering high school will score in direct relation to how much education they have received in that span of time. Yet another chink in the armor of IQ test infallibility comes from Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University and Lenore Jacobsen, an elementary school principal in San Francisco, who successfully convinced a group of teachers that certain students were gifted. According to Pygmalion in the Classroom, in which the study is published, the students, who actually were chosen at random, surpassed their classmates and became high-level achievers. These “brighter” students scored an average of 12.22 points improvement on achievement tests administered at the beginning and end of the year, compared with only an 8.42 point improvement from their classmates. The only difference between the two groups was in how the teachers responded to their learning needs.

智商测试局限性的另一个体现是,同一项测试的分数会随着时间的推移而不断提高。由于智力几乎不可能如此快速地增长,这表明智商测试本身就包含社会学因素,并且测试本身也反映了这些社会学因素。

Another indication of the limitation of the IQ test is the fact that scores on the same test have been increasing over time. Because it is almost impossible that intelligence is rising that fast, this suggests that there are sociological aspects to the test and that the test reflects those sociological aspects.

近年来,一些社会学家认为标准化智力测试也存在种族偏见。这同样与孩子的成长环境有关。在低收入地区长大的黑人孩子可能不知道希腊的首都在哪里,但缺乏这一点信息并不意味着他们的学习能力比高收入家庭的孩子差。另一些人则持不同意见,他们认为测试的并非“白人信息”。

In recent years, some social scientists have argued that standardized intelligence tests are racially biased as well. Again, this relates to the environment in which the child is raised. A black child raised in a low-income area may not know what the capital of Greece is, but the lack of that one bit of information does not indicate less learning ability than a child from a high-income background enjoys. Others disagree, arguing that it is not “white information” that is tested.

我们从这些研究中可以得出的结论是,人们在智力测试中取得的分数既取决于他们先前的经历,也取决于他们遗传的智力倾向。在环境条件相似的情况下,分数的差异或许可以粗略地反映出先天智力倾向的差异。然而,我们必须谨慎地假设任何两个人真的拥有相同或几乎相同的环境。

The conclusion we can draw from such studies is that the scores people make on intelligence tests are a result of their previous experiences as well as of their inherited mental aptitudes. Where conditions of environment have been similar, differences in scores maybe a rough indication of differences of innate mental aptitude. However, we must be cautious in assuming that any two given individuals have really had the same, or nearly the same, environment.

一些教育工作者认为,这些智力测试只是知识测试,不一定是对智力的测试。目前,一种趋势是使用不同类型的测试,例如评估学生的作业集,或在计算机上进行测试,计算机根据考生对前几个问题的回答情况选择下一个问题。然而,开发新的测试、说服学校采用这些测试以及培训教育工作者进行测试和评分的成本很高。目前使用的标准智商测试很可能在未来很多年内继续被广泛使用。

Some educators say that these intelligence tests are knowledge tests, not necessarily tests of intelligence. Currently there is a trend to use different kinds of tests, such as assessing a portfolio of a student’s work or testing on a computer where the computer selects the next question based on how the test-taker has answered the preceding questions. However, it is expensive to develop new tests, to persuade schools to adopt them, and to train educators to administer and grade them. The standard IQ tests currently employed will probably continue to be widely used for many years.

智力远不止是精神操纵

Intelligence Is Far More Than Mental Manipulation

所有测试只有在我们认识到其局限性时才有用。智商测试可以告诉我们一个人在测试时可能具备的智力水平,但它并不能也无法衡量先天或遗传的心理潜能。一个可能更严重的局限性在于,很难对智力进行定义,以至于所有构成智力的要素都无法通过测试进行正确评估。能否对智力概念进行更精确的定义,以及能否更准确地确定不同个体(尤其是高智商个体)的相对智力水平,都值得怀疑。定义智力是有问题的,但我们之前的定义——智力是指一个人理解自身所处情境并做出令人满意的调整的能力,前提是这种调整依赖于学习和思考——可能是我们所能做的最好的定义。一个人越聪明,就越能做到以下几点:

All tests are useful only if we recognize their limitations. IQ tests tell us something about the probable intelligence of an individual at the time a test is taken, but they do not and cannot measure innate or inherited mental potentialities. A possibly more serious limitation grows out of the difficulty of defining intelligence in such a way that all the elements that enter into it can be correctly rated by a test. It is doubtful whether the concept can be defined with much precision and whether the relative intelligence of different individuals, especially at the higher levels, can be determined with much accuracy. Defining intelligence is problematic, but our earlier definition—that intelligence is the ability of a person to understand the situations that confront him or her and to make satisfactory adjustments to them insofar as such adjustments depend on learning and thinking—is probably the best we can do. The more intelligent a person is, the better able he or she is to do the following:

  • 整体地看待情况,而不是部分地或不完整地看待情况
  • Perceive a situation as a whole rather than partially or incompletely
  • 快速学习
  • Learn quickly
  • 将思想和学习集中在期望的方向上
  • Concentrate thought and learning in a desired direction
  • 找到令人满意的解决方案,无论是否有他人帮助
  • Find satisfactory solutions, either with or without help from others

高智商可能需要相当强的想象力和创造力,因为为了解决一个难题,我们通常需要思考和评估许多新颖的方法。

High intelligence probably requires considerable imagination and originality, since in order to solve a difficult problem we generally need to think of and evaluate a number of novel approaches.

当我们假设所谓的心理测试能够衡量智力时,我们实际上是在假设正确回答测试问题所需的智力能力与解决现实生活中有时遇到的复杂问题所需的智力能力相同。但这并非总是如此,因为心理测试存在诸多限制。例如,测试必须在有限的时间内完成,理论上认为这样可以使个人的得分更具可比性。但世界上一些最伟大的成就是由那些养成了缓慢思考难题、每一步都进行检验习惯的人取得的。

When we assume that a so-called mental test measures intelligence, we are assuming that the mental abilities required for correct answers to its questions are the same as those needed for solving the sometimes complex problems encountered in real life. This is not always true, since mental tests have many limitations. For example, they must be completed within a limited period of time on the theory that this makes the scores of individuals more comparable. But some of the world’s greatest achievements have been made by people who have acquired the habit of thinking through difficult problems slowly, checking at every step

以避免遗漏一些重要的考量。此外,让自己的思维和想象力有目的地漫游,花时间去寻找情境中不寻常或不太可能的方面,也是一种智能行为。它也是原创性或创造力的重要组成部分。智商测试并不能衡量这些能力。许多研究已经对多元智能模型进行了研究,这些模型假设智力有多个不同的维度,并且这些维度不能像智商那样被简化为一个有意义的数字。然而,研究人员尚未提出一个可接受的替代方案。

to avoid missing some important consideration. Furthermore, to allow one’s mind and imagination to wander with a purpose, to take time to search for the unusual or unlikely aspects of a situation, is one kind of intelligent behavior. It is also an important ingredient in originality or creativity. IQ tests do not measure such abilities. Much research has been done on multiple intelligence models, which assume that there are several different dimensions of intelligence, and that these dimensions cannot be reduced to a single meaningful number such as is attempted with IQ. Researchers have yet, however, to come up with an acceptable alternative.

智力与个人适应

Intelligence and Personal Adjustment

智力,尤其是通过智商测试衡量的智力,与一个人的适应能力几乎没有关联,除非智商最高(超过150)和智商最低(低于60)。这两个极端群体通常比中等智商人群更难适应社会。智商通常不重要的原因是,个人适应能力更多地与情绪稳定性以及接受自我身份有关,而非与考试高分能力有关。

Intelligence, especially if we mean intelligence measured by IQ tests, has little relation to one’s ability to adjust except at the highest IQ levels (above 150) and lowest IQ levels (below 60). Both of these extreme groups often have a harder time adjusting to society than do people in the middle ranges. The reason that IQ generally is not important is that personal adjustment has more to do with emotional stability and coming to terms with what one is as a person than it does with one’s ability to score high on a test.

即使智商测试确实能准确衡量智力,也应该指出,智力和成功并非同义词。许多高智商人士难以应对生活;他们或许能够解决复杂的数学问题,但却完全不知道如何与他人相处。商业领袖的智商通常处于平均水平(正常和聪明的正常水平),而不是超高或非常高。他们拥有坚韧不拔的意志、动力、雄心、与他人合作的能力以及想象力等品质,这些品质对于商业成功至关重要,甚至可能比超高智商更为重要。我们可以根据自己的经验来判断;在大学里,我们身边总是围绕着高智商的人,坦率地说,他们中的许多人确实很烦人。

Even if IQ tests did measure intelligence accurately, it should be pointed out that intelligence and success are not synonymous. Many high-IQ individuals have difficulty coping with life; they might be able to solve a complicated mathematical problem, but they haven’t the faintest idea how to interrelate with other people. Business leaders generally fall in the average (normal and bright normal) IQ category, not the superior or very superior categories. They have qualities such as internal fortitude, drive, ambition, ability to work with others, and imagination, which are necessary and probably more important than superior intelligence for business success. We can speak from experience; being at a university we’re around people with high IQs all the time and, quite frankly, many of them can be real pains.

结论

Conclusion

正如你从本章的讨论中看到的,以及你可能从自己的生活中也体会到的,调整性格以适应社会,以及调整社会以适应性格并非易事。这些调整需要从生到死的持续努力。对我们许多人来说,这似乎是一项几乎无法克服的努力,而且我们处境艰难。正是这种感觉,让如此多的人对流行心理学产生了兴趣。

As you can see from the discussion in this chapter, and as you probably know from your own life, adjusting personality to fit society and adjusting society to fit personality are not easy. These adjustments involve a continual effort extending from birth to death. For many of us, it will seem an almost insurmountable effort in which the cards are stacked against us. It is precisely this feeling that leads so many into pop psychology.

本章介绍了各种理论和疗法,几乎所有理论和疗法都有一定的价值。或许,最有用的教训并非在于这些理论是什么(尽管了解这些理论是必要的),而是在于心理问题在社会大多数成员中普遍存在。我们很容易认为自己与时代格格不入,而他人则适应良好(反之亦然)。

This chapter presents a variety of theories and therapies, and almost all of them have some value. Perhaps the most useful lesson here is not so much what the theories are (although this knowledge is necessary) as it is that psychological problems are prevalent among most members of society. It is all too easy to see ourselves as out of step and others as well adjusted (or vice versa).

就课程而言,重要的一课是理解个人与社会相互关联的过程。社会由个人组成,但社会作为一个整体,远不止这些个人的总和。因此,个人发展和社会发展是双向的。

In terms of the course, the important lesson is to understand the processes by which individuals and societies interrelate. Society is composed of individuals, but society as a whole is much more than the sum of those individuals. Thus, individual development and societal development make up a two-way street.

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 文化是由该文化中的个人所创造的,而个人的性格又由文化所塑造和塑造。
  • Culture is created by the individuals within that culture, and individuals’ personalities are in turn shaped and molded by culture.
  • 先天和后天都会影响性格和个人发展。
  • Both nature and nurture affect personality and individual development.
  • 积极和消极的强化有助于塑造个人的个性。
  • Positive and negative reinforcement help shape an individual’s personality.
  • 自我实现是马斯洛需求层次理论中的最高层次。
  • Self-actualization is the highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
  • 弗洛伊德认为人格由三个主要系统组成:本我、自我和超我。
  • Freud saw personality as consisting of three major systems: the id, the ego, and the superego.
  • 防御机制是个人用来避免面对问题的行为。
  • Defense mechanisms are behaviors that individuals use to avoid facing issues.
  • 智商测试可能很有用,但只有正确看待其局限性才行。
  • IQ tests can be useful, but only if their limitations are kept in perspective.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 行为主义方法(118)
  • behavioralist approach (118)
  • 认知方法(118)
  • cognitive approach (118)
  • 认知科学(118)
  • cognitive science (118)
  • 防御机制(120)
  • defense mechanism (120)
  • 自我(120)
  • ego (120)
  • 表观遗传学(117)
  • epigenetics (117)
  • 野孩子(114)
  • feral children (114)
  • 遗传(116)
  • heredity (116)
  • 人文主义方法(118)
  • humanist approach (118)
  • ID(120)
  • id (120)
  • 婴儿自闭症(114)
  • infantile autism (114)
  • 本能(115)
  • instincts (115)
  • 情报(122)
  • intelligence (122)
  • IQ(智商)(123)
  • IQ (intelligence quotient) (123)
  • 马斯洛需求层次理论(118)
  • Maslow’s hierarchy (118)
  • 先天与后天之争(117)
  • nature/nurture debate (117)
  • 负强化(116)
  • negative reinforcement (116)
  • 正常人 (119)
  • normal person (119)
  • 俄狄浦斯情结(120)
  • Oedipus complex (120)
  • 操作性条件反射(116)
  • operant conditioning (116)
  • 百分位排名(123)
  • percentile rank (123)
  • 个性(111)
  • personality (111)
  • 正强化(116)
  • positive reinforcement (116)
  • 精神分析(119)
  • psychoanalysis (119)
  • 精神分析方法(118)
  • psychoanalytic approach (118)
  • 惩罚(116)
  • punishment (116)
  • 自我实现(118)
  • self-actualization (118)
  • 超我(120)
  • superego (120)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 是文化控制人,还是人控制文化?解释两者之间的关系。
  2. Does culture control people or do people control culture? Explain the relationship between the two.
  3. 孤立对儿童的影响如何证明社会化的重要性?
  4. How do the effects of isolation on children support the importance of socialization?
  5. 一些杰出人士对我们的文化做出了重大贡献。请列举一位你认为做出如此贡献的人士,并讨论其贡献。
  6. Some outstanding individuals have made significant contributions to our culture. Name someone who you think has done this, and discuss that person’s contribution.
  7. 讨论童年时期影响个人性格的一些因素。
  8. Discuss some of the factors in childhood that influence an individual’s personality.
  9. 根据斯金纳的观点,解释操作性条件反射如何塑造人格。
  10. Explain how, according to Skinner, operant conditioning shapes personality.
  11. 在操作性条件反射中,“积极”和“消极”是什么意思?
  12. What do “positive” and “negative” mean in the context of operant conditioning?
  13. 在人格发展中,环境和遗传哪个更重要?解释两者之间的关系。
  14. Which is more important in the development of personality: environment or heredity? Explain the relationship between the two.
  15. 对比四种行为决定方法:认知方法、精神分析方法、行为主义方法和人文主义方法。
  16. Contrast the four approaches to the determination of behavior: cognitive, psychoanalytic, behavioral ist, and humanist.
  17. 根据马斯洛的理论,人类成就分为哪五个层次?
  18. According to Maslow, what are the five levels of human achievement?
  19. 适应良好的人有哪些特征?
  20. What are some of the characteristics of a well-adjusted individual?
  21. 马丁·塞利格曼认为,为了“拥有美好的生活”,人们必须做什么?你同意吗?
  22. What does Martin Seligman suggest one must do in order to “have the good life”? Do you agree?
  23. 解释西格蒙德·弗洛伊德对理解人类个性所做的一些贡献。
  24. Explain some of the contributions that Sigmund Freud made to the understanding of human personality.
  25. 解释智商测试及其测量内容。
  26. Explain the IQ test and what it tries to measure.

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 荣格是一位心理学家,与弗洛伊德同辈。www.terrapsych.com /jungdefs.html网站提供了荣格术语表。什么是恋父情结?
  2. Jung was a psychologist and a peer of Freud. The site www.terrapsych.com/jungdefs.html has a glossary of Jungian terms. What is an Electra complex?
  3. 转到http://files.eric.ed.gov/fnlltext/ED353079.pdf。根据斯托夫的研究,家庭教育是否限制了社交?
  4. Go to http://files.eric.ed.gov/fnlltext/ED353079.pdf.According to Stough’s research, does home schooling limit socialization?
  5. 请访问www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/health/explainingdifferences-in-twins.html来回答这个问题:随着双胞胎年龄的增长,他们是否会变得越来越不像彼此?
  6. Go to www.nytimes.com/2005/07/05/health/explainingdifferences-in-twins.html to answer the question: As twins grow older, do they become less similar to one another?
  7. 参加一个免费的智商测试,比如在www.intelligencetest.com上找到的测试。你认为这个测试旨在评估智力的哪些方面?还有哪些其他方面的知识?
  8. Take a free IQ test, such as that found at www.intelligencetest.com. What aspect of intelligence do you believe the test is designed to evaluate? What other aspects of knowledge are there?
  9. 从http://archive.is/6LohO 的列表中选择一个孩子。这个孩子的照顾者是谁?你相信这个故事吗?所有列出的孩子中,最常见的照顾者是谁?这个孩子通常来自哪里?
  10. Pick a child from the list on http://archive.is/6LohO.What or who was the caregiver? Do you believe the story? For all the children listed, what was the most common caregiver? Where would the child usually be from?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 阿尔福德,亨利,《如何生活:向老人寻求智慧(当他们还在世上时)》,纽约:十二出版社,2009 年。
  • Alford, Henry, How to Live: A Search for Wisdom from Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth), New York: Twelve Publishers, 2009.
  • 达利欧,雷,《原则:生活与工作》纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2017 年。
  • Dalio, Ray, Principles: Life and Work, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017.
  • Haidt,Jonathan,《正义之心:为什么好人会因政治和宗教而分裂》纽约万神殿2012 年
  • Haidt, Jonathan, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, New York: Pantheon, 2012.
  • 约翰逊史蒂文《心智大开:你的大脑和日常生活的神经科学》纽约:斯克里布纳出版社,2004 年。
  • Johnson, Steven, Mind Wide Open: Your Brain and the Neuroscience of Everyday Life, New York: Scribner, 2004.
  • 贾斯特曼,斯图尔特,《愚人的天堂:流行心理学的精简虚幻世界》,伊利诺斯州芝加哥:伊万·R·迪,2005 年。
  • Justman, Stewart, Fool’s Paradise: Lite Unreal World of Pop Psychology, Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, 2005.
  • 卡尼曼,丹尼尔,《思考,快与慢》纽约:法拉、斯特劳斯和吉鲁出版社,2011 年。
  • Kahneman, Daniel, Thinking Fast and Slow, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.
  • Lilienfeld、Scott、Steven Jay Lynn、John Ruscio 和 Barry L. Beyerstein,《大众心理学的 50 大误区:打破对人类行为的普遍误解》纽约:Wiley-Blackwell,2009 年。
  • Lilienfeld, Scott, Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio, and Barry L. Beyerstein, 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior, New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
  • 马丁,朱迪思,《礼仪小姐养育完美孩子的指南》纽约:雅典娜出版社,1984 年。
  • Martin, Judith, Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children, New York: Atheneum, 1984.
  • 马斯洛,AH,《科学心理学:侦察》伊利诺伊州芝加哥:Regnery-Gateway,1969 年。
  • Maslow, A. H., Psychology of Science: A Reconnaissance, Chicago, IL: Regnery-Gateway, 1969.
  • McGuire,Kevin John,《马斯洛需求层次理论:导论》德国:GRIN Verlag GmbH,2015 年。
  • McGuire, Kevin John, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs: An Introduction, Germany: GRIN Verlag GmbH, 2015.
  • 乔恩·米查姆,《美国灵魂:为我们的善良天使而战》纽约:兰登书屋,2019 年
  • Meacham, Jon, The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels, New York: Random House 2019
  • Neese,Randolphe,《坏情绪的充分理由》纽约:Dutton,2019 年。
  • Neese, Randolphe, Good Reasons for Bad Feelings, New York: Dutton, 2019.
  • 彼得森,乔丹,《人生十二规则》多伦多:兰登书屋,2018 年。
  • Peterson, Jordan, 12 Rules for Life, Toronto: Random House, 2018.
  • 平克,丹尼尔,《驱动力:激励我们的惊人真相》纽约:企鹅出版社,2009 年。
  • Pink, Daniel, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us, New York: Penguin, 2009.
  • 史蒂文·平克,《白板:现代人对人性的否定》,纽约:企鹅出版社,2003 年。
  • Pinker, Steven, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, New York: Penguin, 2003.
  • Simler,Kevin 和 Robin Hanson,《脑中的大象》纽约:牛津大学出版社,2018 年。
  • Simler, Kevin and Robin Hanson, The Elephant in the Brain, New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.
  • 斯莱特,劳伦,《打开斯金纳的盒子:二十世纪伟大的心理实验》纽约:WW诺顿,2004 年。
  • Slater, Lauren, Opening Skinner’s Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century, New York: W. W. Norton, 2004.
  • Small,Meredith F.,《孩子:生物学和文化如何塑造我们养育孩子的方式》纽约:Doubleday,2001 年。
  • Small, Meredith F., Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Our Children, New York: Doubleday, 2001.
  • Vendantam,Shankar 和 Biller Mesler,《有用的妄想:自我欺骗大脑的力量与悖论》,纽约:WW Norton,2021 年。
  • Vendantam, Shankar and Biller Mesler, Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self Deceiving Brain, New York: W. W. Norton, 2021.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第八越轨、犯罪与社会

chapter 8Deviance, Crime, and Society

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-8

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-8

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 解释为什么社会科学家强调规范的相对性
  • Explain why social scientists emphasize the relativity of norms
  • 列举各种社会科学偏差理论
  • Name various social science theories of deviance
  • 定义越轨行为并将其与犯罪区分开来
  • Define deviance and distinguish it from crime
  • 列举美国司法系统的三个相互关联的问题
  • List three interrelated problems with the US justice system
  • 解释娱乐性毒品合法化如何减少犯罪
  • Explain how legalizing the use of recreational drugs could reduce crime
  • 区分刑事司法制度的指导目的和惩罚目的
  • Distinguish between the guidance and the punishment purpose of the criminal justice system

2011年7月22日,安德斯·贝林·布雷维克(Anders Behring Breivik)前往一个夏季青年营杀害了69名学生。他被捕并被判处21年监禁。他的住宿条件比大多数大学宿舍都要好;他的房间位于一套三间牢房中,配备了健身器材、电视和笔记本电脑。1996年,蒂莫西·杰克逊(Timothy Jackson)偷了一件价值159美元的夹克。他被捕并被判处终身监禁。他住在一间狭小简朴的牢房里,只有厕所和一张床。为什么结果会有所不同?因为安德斯在挪威犯罪,而蒂莫西在美国犯罪。

On July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik went to a summer youth camp and killed sixty-nine students. He was caught and sentenced to twenty-one years in prison. His accommodations are better than most college dorm rooms; his room is part of a three-cell suite of rooms equipped with exercise equipment, a television, and a laptop. In 1996, Timothy Jackson shoplifted a $159 jacket. He was caught and sentenced to life in prison. He lives in a small, spartan cell with a toilet and a bed. Why the different results? Because Anders committed his crime in Norway, while Timothy committed his crime in the United States.

在本章中,我们将探讨社会如何处理偏差行为(即社会认为不恰当的行为),以及如何运用社会科学视角来思考这些问题,以期帮助我们思考刑事司法系统的改革。社会科学家已经就这些问题进行了广泛的理论探讨。然而,这些理论大多过于复杂,难以在一般的社会科学课程中讲解。因此,在本章的第一部分,我们将对偏差行为、犯罪和社会进行概括性讨论,避免使用社会科学术语。然后,在第二部分,我们将简要概述这些问题的学术讨论。最后,在本章的第三部分,我们将讨论美国司法系统存在的一些问题,以及一些旨在改革司法系统的建议。

In this chapter, we consider how society deals with deviance—actions that society finds inappropriate—and how social science thinking about such issues might be useful in thinking about reforms in our criminal justice system. There has been extensive theorizing by social scientists about these issues. Most of that theorizing quickly gets too complicated for a general social science course, so in the first part of the chapter we provide a general discussion of deviance, crime, and society, avoiding the social science jargon. Then, in the second part we provide you with a brief summary of academic discussions of the issues. Finally, in the third part of the chapter we discuss some problems with the US system of justice and some proposals that have been put forward for changing it.

偏差与规范

Deviance and Norms

任何社会都必须协调众多个体的行为,使他们能够和谐共存。社会实现这一目标的方式之一是制定规范——即对适当或可接受行为的期望——并制定个人遵循这些规范来指导自身行为的方法。尽管我们很少具体思考规范,但我们所有的行为都受到规范的显著影响。个人常常认为自己是独立的自由思想者,但事实上,他们的观点在很大程度上受到环境的影响。

Any society must coordinate the actions of large numbers of individuals so that they fit together. One way in which society does so is to develop norms—expectations about what constitutes appropriate or acceptable behavior—and to develop methods by which individuals adopt those norms to guide their behavior. All of our actions are significantly influenced by norms, even though we seldom think about them specifically. Individuals often think they are independent free-thinkers, but in fact, their views are significantly shaped by their environment.

从定义上讲,大多数人遵循社会规范,但要准确定义这些规范究竟是什么往往并非易事。原因之一是,规范中可能包含鼓励偏离其他规范的规范。社会支持多样性,但不应过度多样化。当个人行为与社会规范相冲突时,这些行为被称为越轨行为。

By definition, most people follow society’s norms, but specifying precisely what those norms are is often difficult. One reason it is difficult is that norms can include a norm which encourages some deviation from other norms. Society supports diversity, but not too much diversity. Individuals’ actions are called deviant when those actions conflict with society’s norms.

关于越轨行为的概念,有几点需要注意。首先,它是一个相对概念。一种行为只有相对于某种规范才能被视为越轨。一种行为可能相对于一套规范而言是越轨的,但相对于其他规范而言却是完全可以接受的。例如,在美国,在公共场合挖鼻孔并将挖出的鼻孔擦在头发上会被视为越轨行为。在南美洲的亚诺马米部落,这是常态;不遵守该常态则是越轨行为。另一个例子是考试作弊。在某些社会中,一定程度的作弊是常态;这是意料之中的事。老师甚至会离开教室去为作弊提供便利。在美国,这种情况很少见。为了明确规范的相对性,社会学家强调,使一种行为越轨的是社会对行为的反应,而不是行为本身。

A number of aspects should be noted about the concept of deviance. The first is that it is a relative concept. An action can only be considered deviant relative to a norm. An action could be deviant relative to one set of norms, but quite acceptable relative to other norms. For example, picking one’s nose in public and wiping the result on one’s hair would be considered deviant in the United States. In the Yanomamö tribe in South America, that is the norm; not following that norm is the deviant behavior. Another example is cheating on exams. In some societies, a certain amount of cheating is the norm; it is expected. Teachers even leave the room to facilitate it. In the United States, that is far less the case. To make this relativity of norms clear, sociologists emphasize that it is society’s reaction to the action, not the action itself, that makes an action deviant.

社会政策不会选择​​规范,但它确实会影响规范。许多关于政策的争论,实际上就是在争论人们认为对社会最有利的一套规范。社会规范应该是每个人都结婚生子,然后“好女人”留在家里照顾孩子吗?还是社会规范应该是夫妻双方都工作,分担抚养孩子的责任,甚至对“好女人”这个词都感到畏缩?又或者,社会规范应该是人们不结婚,甚至不同居,男性只需贡献精子用于生育,在其他方面几乎不参与养育孩子?

Policy in society doesn’t choose norms, but it does influence them, and many of the debates about policy are actually debates about the set of norms people believe are best for society. Should the norm of society be that everyone gets married and has two children, with the “good woman” staying home and taking care of the kids? Or should the norm of society be one in which both spouses work, share child-rearing responsibility, and cringe at even the use of the term “good woman”? Or should it be one in which people don’t get married or even live together, with the male just contributing his sperm to reproduction, and otherwise taking little part in the rearing of children?

这些不是人们通常会问的问题。规范通常是不言而喻的;人们凭直觉了解它们,但如果要求他们解释它们是什么,或者为什么它们是社会应该拥有的规​​范,他们就无法回答。更困难的是,规范会随着时间而演变,并且会因不同的地理区域和社会群体而有所不同。因此,实际上,社会规范反映了社会各个子群体规范的组合。通常,社会子群体之间的冲突源于相互冲突的规范。规范的一个子集是习俗(发音为mor-rays)。习俗是具有重要道德意义的规范。偏离习俗比偏离规范更为严重。习俗的一个例子是对同性恋的看法以及社会是否宽恕它。

These are not questions people normally ask. Norms are usually unstated; people know them intuitively, but if they are asked to explain what they are, or why they are the norms society should have, they can’t do so. What makes it even harder is that norms evolve over time, and they evolve differently for different geographic areas and social groups. So, actually, society’s norms reflect a combination of the norms of the subgroups of a society. Often, conflict among subgroups in society is rooted in conflicting norms. A subset of norms is mores (pronounced mor-rays). Mores are norms that have great moral significance. A deviation from mores is more significant than a deviation from norms. An example of mores would be views of homosexuality and whether society condones it.

冲突的规范和紧张局势

Conflicting Norms and Tension

相互冲突的规范和习俗会引发社会紧张,因此社会需要能够解决或至少限制这些冲突的机构。美国大学教育体系将来自不同背景和地区的学生聚集在一起,其影响之一就是社会规范的同质化。大学的作用不仅仅是教育你,它还会改变你——从大学毕业的人将不再是刚上大学时的那个人。社会科学课程的目标之一就是让你思考这个转变过程——让你观察自己被改变的过程,从而帮助你确定你是谁:是观察者、被改变者,还是介于两者之间。坦白地说,我现在正试图通过向你灌输宽容和深思熟虑的规范来改变你。目标是让你更加宽容,即使你仍然保留着自己对是非对错的规范观点。

Conflicting norms and mores can cause social tension, so society needs institutions that resolve or at least limit those conflicts. One of the effects of the U. S. college education system, which brings together students from different backgrounds and geographic areas, is a homogenization of society’s norms. College does more than educate you. It also transforms you—the person graduating from college will not be the same person who started college. One of the goals of a social science course is to get you thinking about that transformative process—to get you to watch yourself being changed, and thereby help you determine who you are: the person watching, the person being changed, or someone in between. To be honest with you, I am attempting to change you right now by imbuing you with the norms of tolerance and thoughtful deliberation. The goal is to make you more tolerant, even while you retain your personal normative views of right and wrong.

在之前的章节中,我提到本课程的目标之一是为你介绍“书本智慧”,以便你能够理解周围环境的社会规范。这种“理解”的技能,往往比任何特定技能都更能成为人生成功的关键。理解并不意味着你必须认同和/或遵循所有的社会规范。事实上,正如我之前所说,社会确实认可一定程度的偏差。但这确实意味着,当你挑战你所交往群体的规范时,你应该意识到,你是出于自愿,而非无意,并且你已经意识到并做好了应对后果的准备。正如乡村歌手肯尼·罗杰斯所说:“你必须知道何时该坚持,何时该放弃。”

In an earlier chapter, I said that one of the goals of this course was to provide you with an introduction of “book smarts” so that you are tuned in to reading the societal norms of your surroundings. That “being tuned in” skill, often more than any specific skill, is central to succeeding in life. To be tuned in doesn’t mean that you have to agree with and/or follow all of society’s norms. In fact, as I stated earlier, society values a certain amount of deviance. But it does mean that you should be aware when you are challenging the norms of the group you are interacting with, that you do so by choice, not by accident, and that you are aware of and prepared for the consequences. As country singer Kenny Rogers put it, “You have to know when to hold ’em, and know when to fold ’em.”

有些规范几乎是普遍适用的——例如,禁止杀人。但即使是这样的普遍规范也允许存在偏差。例如,在帮派文化中,如果有人诋毁帮派或侵犯其地盘,帮派成员可能会被要求杀死违规者。在其他文化中,如果女性在婚前与男性发生关系,其家人可能会被要求杀死。她侵犯了家庭荣誉。堕胎是另一种根据不同规范被不同看待的行为。我们社会中,一些群体认为这是杀戮;另一些群体则认为这只是允许母亲选择是否生育孩子。另一种被不同群体不同看待的杀戮是死刑,即国家将一个人处死以惩罚他。一些社会认为这是可以允许的;另一些社会则认为这是国家不允许的杀戮——违反了基本规范。

Some norms are almost universal—a norm against killing others for example. But even such universal norms allow for deviations. For example in gang culture, if someone disses a gang or violates its turf, members of the gang may be expected to kill the violator. In other cultures, if a woman has relations with a man before marriage, her family is expected to kill her for violating the family’s honor. Abortion is another act that is seen differently according to different norms. Some groups in our society see it as killing; others see it as simply allowing the mother to have a choice of whether to have a child or not. Another type of killing that is seen differently by different groups is capital punishment, where the state punishes a person by putting him or her to death. Some societies see this as allowable; others see it as unallowable killing by the state—a violation of a fundamental norm.

在美国大部分地区,尤其是精英阶层,体罚儿童已不再被接受。© PhotoAlto/Sandro Di Carlo Darsa/Getty

Physical punishment of children is no longer found acceptable in much of the United States, especially among the elite part of the population. © PhotoAlto/Sandro Di Carlo Darsa/Getty

其他规范,例如关于同性恋的规范,则不那么普遍。大多数非洲国家将同性恋视为异常行为,而欧洲和北美社会则越来越多地将同性恋视为正常行为。社会科学课程的目标并非告诉你哪一套规范是正确的;而是让你了解不同的规范,并认识到社会必须找到方法将这些不同的规范融合成一项既尊重个人权利又能将这些个人权利与社会规范相协调、相融合的社会政策。理想情况下,理解这一过程会让你更加宽容,减少将自己的规范强加于人的可能性。

Other norms, such as the norm about homosexuality, are less universal. Most African countries see homosexuality as deviant behavior, whereas European and North American societies increasingly see homosexuality as normal behavior. The goal of a social science course is not to tell you what set of norms are the right ones; the goal is to make you aware of the differing norms, and to recognize that society has to find ways of blending those different norms into a social policy that respects individual rights, but that also tempers and blends those individual rights into society’s norms. Ideally, understanding that process makes you more tolerant and less likely to impose your norms on others.

社会的异质性越大,规范的相对性就越明显。一个例子是关于父母惩罚子女的规范。在某些社会阶层,体罚是常态——比如,当孩子行为不端时,用皮带抽打孩子。NFL跑卫阿德里安·彼得森就是这样惩罚他的孩子,因为他小时候也受过体罚,他觉得体罚让他变得更好。

This relativity of norms is more pronounced the greater the heterogeneity of the society. An example involves the norms surrounding parental punishment for children. In some subsections of society, it is the norm to use physical punishment—say, spanking the child with a belt when the child has misbehaved. NFL running back Adrian Peterson punished his child in this manner, because he had been physically punished when he was a child and he felt the physical punishment made him a better person.

此类行为过去在美国社会普遍被接受,现在在美国部分地区仍然如此。“棍棒底下出孝子”这句老话就体现了这种观点。但在美国大部分地区,尤其是在精英阶层,体罚儿童已不再被接受。反对体罚的规范已经变得如此普遍,以至于被写入法律,并被定为犯罪。阿德里安·彼得森(Adrian Peterson)就曾亲身经历过这种情况,他因为做了他认为是做好父母的一部分的事情而被判有罪。

Such actions used to be acceptable within broader US society and still are in parts of the United States. The old saying “spare the rod; spoil the child” reflects this view. But physical punishment of children is no longer found acceptable in much of the United States, especially among the elite part of the population. The norm against such physical punishment has become so widespread that it has been built into the law and made into a crime. Adrian Peterson found that out when he was convicted of a crime for doing what he thought was part of being a good parent.

正如前面的讨论所明确指出的,规范本身具有一定的任意性,哪些行为被视为越轨行为,哪些行为被视为犯罪。由于规范很少是明确的,因此个人要想在社会中良好运作,一项重要技能就是能够感知自身所处社会的规范,并使自己的行为符合这些可接受的规范。

As the preceding discussion should make clear, there is a certain arbitrariness to norms, what is considered deviant behavior, and what is considered a crime. Since norms are seldom clear-cut, an important skill that individuals need to function well in society is to be able to sense the norms of the society they are in and to fit their actions into those acceptable norms.

规范、犯罪和法治

Norms, Crime, and the Rule of Law

要从规范转向犯罪,我们必须将政府和法治纳入讨论。虽然我们将在后面的章节中专门讨论政府,但让我们简要概括一下政治学对政府和法律的标准解释:在政治理论中,政府是由人们建立的机构,旨在帮助协调他们的行动,并将模糊的规范转化为精确的法律,从而“控制”人们的行为。如果没有政府,就会出现混乱和持续的战争。政府涉及人们之间的共识,即遵守政府制定的法律,以实现所有人的更美好生活。为此,政府制定法律,明确规定哪些越轨行为应受惩罚,哪些越轨行为虽然不被认可但并非犯罪,以及对“犯罪”的惩罚是什么。

To move from norms to crime, we must integrate government and the rule of law into the discussion. Although we will discuss government specifically in a later chapter, let us present a brief summary of a standard political science explanation of government and the law: In political theory, government is an institution that has been established by people to help coordinate their actions and translate vaguely understood norms into precise laws, which “control" people’s behavior. In the absence of government, there would be chaos and continual war. Government involves an agreement among people to follow the laws that government establishes to achieve a better life for all. To do so, governments establish laws that specify which deviant behavior is a punishable crime, which deviant behavior is not approved but is not a crime, and what the punishments for “crimes” are.

虽然政府是必要的,但政府需要受到限制,因为它拥有如此强大的权力——征税的权力、限制个人行为的权力和惩罚的权力个人。为了防止政府过度压迫,政府制定法律,不仅限制个人行为,也限制政府行为。具体来说,政府受到所谓法治的约束。法治意味着,关于某事是否构成犯罪的裁决并非基于个案,而是被编纂成法。这使得个人能够知道自己的行为是否合法,即使该行为可能不被大多数社会成员或现任政府所接受。

While governments are necessary, government needs to be limited since it has such strong powers—the power to tax, the power to restrict individual actions, and the power to punish individuals. To prevent governments from becoming too oppressive, governments establish laws that restrict not only what individuals do, but also what governments do. Specifically, governments are limited by what is called the rule of law. The rule of law means that decisions about whether something is, or is not, a crime are not made on a case-by-case basis, but are instead codified into the law of the land. This allows an individual to know whether he or she is undertaking an action that is legal, even if that action might not be liked by most of society or by the current government.

“法治”对政府的限制旨在确保关于具体问题的决策不是由现任政府任意做出的,而是基于以某种方式编纂成法律的法律先例。美国《权利法案》就是法治对政府限制的一个例子:它体现了对政府行为的限制,以及政府必须做什么的限制,以确保其不侵犯个人权利。原则上,美国政府不能因为不喜欢某人的信仰或态度而将其投入监狱。至少理论上是这样运作的。但在实践中,它的运作方式要复杂得多,也更加混乱,并且在不同的社会中有所不同。

The “rule of law” limitation on government is designed to see that decisions about specific issues are not made arbitrarily by the current government but are made according to legaal precedents that have somehow been codified into law. The US Bill of Rights is an example of limits on government created by the rule of law: it embodies limitations on what government can do and what government is required to do so that it does not violate an individual’s rights. In principle, the US government cannot throw someone into jail because it doesn’t like his or her beliefs or because it doesn’t like his or her attitude. That’s at least the way it is supposed to work in theory. The way it works in practice is much more complicated, messy, and differs in different societies.

大多数观察家认为美国的法律理论结构令人钦佩。但他们认为,其实际运作方式远非如此。试想一下这个问题:“鉴于美国社会规范的多样性,我们能指望美国公民受到公平和一致的对待吗?” 许多人的答案是:“不,美国很大一部分人口并没有得到公平或一致的对待。美国的制度并非最差,但也远非最佳。” 你可以在世界正义工程的排名中看到这一点。在该排名中,美国在102个国家中排名第27位;中国排名第98位。

Most observers find the United States’ theoretical legal structure admirable. They see the way it works out in practice as far less admirable. Consider the question “Can a citizen be expected to be treated fairly and consistently in the United States, given all the heterogeneous norms in US society?” The answer that many people come to is “No, large segments of the US population are not treated fairly or consistently. The US isn’t the worst system, but it is far from the best.” You can see this in a ranking done by the World Justice Project. In that ranking, the United States ranked twenty-seventh out of 102 countries; China came out ninety-eighth.

当规范发生冲突时:冲出康普顿

When Norms Conflict: Straight Outta Compton

让我们考虑一下美国司法系统存在的一个缺陷——对低收入黑人的待遇——以及如何改善这种状况的不同观点。

Let’s consider an area in which the US justice system falls short—the treatment of low-income blacks—and the differing views of how to try to improve the situation.

在像美国这样的大社会中,存在许多社会子集,每个子​​集都有自己的规范,但没有自己的法律。这意味着人们可以遵循某个社会子集的规范,而却可以违反更广泛的社会规范和法律。一个无害的例子是:在某些地区,女服务员称呼顾客为“亲爱的”是正常的,但在其他地区则不合适。着装规范也差异很大。当社会不是同质的时,不同子集的不同规范可能会给社会带来问题。一个不那么无害的例子是,如果某条规范规定,如果有人侮辱了你,你必须体罚那个人。在社会的某些部分,这是规范,但体现在法律中的更广泛的美国规范规定,这是不合适和违法的。

In a large society, such as the United States, there are many subsets of society, each with its own norms but not with its own laws. That means that one can be following a norm of one subset of society and be deviant in relation to the broader society’s set of norms and laws. An innocuous example is the following: A waitress calling a customer “honey” is normal in some geographic areas, but inappropriate in others. Dress codes also vary significantly. When society is not homogeneous, different norms for subsets can cause problems for society. A less innocuous example is when a norm says that if someone has dissed you, you have to physically punish that person. In some parts of society that is the norm, but the broader US norm embodied in the law says that is inappropriate and illegal.

不同的规范和法律,可能会使社会中某个群体在更广泛的社会群体眼中被视为越轨者甚至罪犯,即使该群体中的人只是遵循着该群体的规范。在这种情况下,结果可能是文化冲突、暴力以及对法律的丧失。许多人认为,这种情况在美国之所以发生,是因为低收入地区,尤其是黑人聚居区,形成了与更广泛的社会群体所遵循的规范不同的规范。

Differing norms and laws can make a subset of society both deviant and criminal in the eyes of broader society, even though the people in that subset are simply following the norms of that subset. In that case, the result can be a clash of cultures, violence, and loss of respect for the law. Many believe that has happened in the United States as low-income areas, especially those that are black, have developed different norms than those that the broader society follows.

匪帮说唱就是一个例子,电影《冲出康普顿》讲述了黑帮说唱乐队NWA(又称“态度黑鬼”)的历史。许多人认为他们的作品宣扬暴力、谋杀、厌女症、亵渎、性瘾、恐同、种族主义、滥交、强奸、破坏公物和偷窃——这些行为在社会上大多数人看来都应受谴责。他们的歌曲充斥着对规范的违反,这种违反使得他们的作品在年轻人中广受欢迎,而年轻人天生就倾向于以可接受的方式反抗社会规范。年轻人对匪帮说唱的接受在主流社会引发了两种反应。进步自由主义者认为匪帮说唱的歌词是对美国社会黑人所遭受的不公正待遇的合理愤怒表达;他们认为这是一种可以接受的违反规范的行为。尽管进步主义者认为NWA所美化的行为令人厌恶,但他们仍然支持NWA。他们认为,NWA 并不是真的在为歌词中传达的规范辩护;而只是在发泄贫穷黑人所面临的压迫。

Gangsta rap is an example, and the movie Straight Outta Compton recounts the history of the group NWA or Niggaz with Attitude. Their work was seen by many as promoting violence, murder, misogyny, profanity, sex addiction, homophobia, racism, promiscuity, rape, vandalism, and thievery—actions that most in society find reprehensible. Their songs reveled in the violation of norms, and that violation made their work popular among youth, who have a natural tendency to want to rebel against society’s norms in an acceptable way. This acceptance of gangsta rap among the youth provoked two reactions in mainstream society. Progressive liberals justified the lyrics of gangsta rap as an expression of legitimate outrage at the injustices faced by blacks in US society; they saw it as an acceptable violation of norms. Even though progressives found the actions glorified by NWA repugnant, they nonetheless supported NWA. They argued that NWA wasn’t really arguing for the norms conveyed in the lyrics; it was simply venting about the oppression poor blacks face.

保守派认为匪帮说唱是一种不可接受的违反规范的行为——如果它是发泄,那也是不恰当的发泄,不应被美化。托马斯·索维尔等保守派社会学家认为,美化匪帮说唱会伤害年轻黑人,因为它会鼓励他们表达与NWA一样的傲慢态度,而这种态度与主流规范相冲突。这样做会削弱年轻黑人融入现有主流社会的能力。

Conservatives saw gangsta rap as an unacceptable violation of norms—if it was venting, it was inappropriate venting that should not be glorified. Conservative social scientists, such as Thomas Sowell, argued that glorifying gangsta rap hurts young blacks because it encourages them to express the same cocky attitude of NWA, an attitude that conflicted with mainstream norms. By doing so, it undermined young black people’s ability to fit into existing mainstream society.

是的,索维尔同意,年轻的黑人男性确实受到歧视——他自己就是黑人,年轻贫困的时候也遭受过歧视。但他进一步指出,部分歧视是对一种态度的回应,这种态度无论在社会上由谁表现出来都会遭到反对。他讲述了自己如何学习更广泛的社会规范,以及如何凭借运气、导师和他人的帮助以及自身的努力,被主流社会接纳,并过上了比原本可能更加充实、更加充实的生活。他认为,如果大多数黑人青年也走类似的道路,他们的生活会更好。鼓励年轻的黑人男性炫耀一种傲慢、桀骜不驯和咄咄逼人的态度,即使这种态度或许有其合理性,也会削弱他们在主流社会取得成功的机会。

Yes, Sowell agreed, young black males are discriminated against—he is black and when he was young and poor, he was discriminated against. But he further argued that some of that discrimination is a response to an attitude that would be objected to regardless of who exhibited it in society. He tells how he learned the norms of broader society, and how because of luck, help from mentors and individuals, and hard work on his part, he was accepted by mainstream society and had a much more productive and fulfilling life than he otherwise would have. He argues that most black youths would be better off if they followed a similar path. Encouraging young black males to flaunt a cocky, defiant, and in-your-face attitude, even if that attitude may be justified, undermines their chances to succeed in mainstream society.

匪帮说唱歌手如何看待自己的作品尚不明确。最初,匪帮说唱歌手或许是在宣扬歌词中所表达的规范;这些规范在帮派文化中盛行。但随着NWA越来越成功(匪帮说唱成为一种利润丰厚的艺术形式,让许多说唱歌手发了财),他们开始以符合自由主义立场的方式“解释”自己的歌词——将其视为必要的愤怒,以凸显美国社会中尚未得到解决的问题。他们将自己的作品描绘成一种媒介,引导社会讨论那些它宁愿回避的问题。

What gangsta rappers saw their work as is unclear. Initially gangsta rappers may have been advocating the norms expressed in their lyrics; such norms were prevalent in gang culture. But as NWA became more successful (gangsta rap became a highly lucrative art form that made a number of rappers rich), they started to “explain” their lyrics in ways that fit the liberal justification—as necessary outrage to highlight the problems in US society that were not being addressed. They presented their work as a vehicle that gets society to discuss issues it would rather avoid.

NWA,即“态度黑鬼”(Niggaz With Attitude)。© Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

NWA or Niggaz With Attitude. © Raymond Boyd/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images

NWA最近的辩解和措辞表明,他们已经学会了社会规范——他们给出的辩解承认其歌词违反了更广泛的社会规范,但却用另一种社会规范——对遭受社会压迫的人给予宽容——来为这种违反行为辩护。这种宽容规范允许某些规范被违反——至少是口头上的——前提是其目标是实现更高的目标:让社会变得更好。

NWA’s recent justification and phraseology shows that it has learned society’s norms—the justification it provides accepts that the lyrics in their songs violate society’s broader norms, but justifies that violation by another norm of society—the norm of being tolerant of people who have been oppressed by society. That tolerance norm allows that certain norms can be violated—at least verbally—if the goal is a higher purpose: to change society for the better.

自由派认为这种辩护是可以接受的——受压迫的亚群体应该比社会上其他群体享有更大的自由空间。保守派则认为,这种辩护不过是一些空洞的空谈,旨在为那些不合理的行为和歌词辩护。他们认为,鼓励表达这种厌世的观点,恰恰对自由派想要帮助的受压迫亚群体造成了极大的伤害;它破坏了那些有助于促进年轻黑人男性未来的规范的建立。

Liberals see such justification as acceptable— oppressed subgroups should be allowed more leeway than others in society. Conservatives see such justifications as just a lot of doubletalk designed to justify actions and song lyrics that are unjustifiable. They argue that encouraging expression of such misanthropic views is highly detrimental to precisely the oppressed subgroup that liberals want to help; it undermines the establishment of norms that would advance young black men’s future.

本书的目的并非论证自由派或保守派的观点是否正确。相反,本书旨在让你了解,此类辩护方法确实存在,并且可能包含一些真理。至于这些辩护是否合理,或者它们是否仅仅是社会科学对几乎所有受过教育的人都谴责而非赞扬的行为的粉饰,则需要你自己去判断。

The goal of this book is not to argue that the liberal or conservative view is correct. Instead it is to let you know that such methods of justification exist, and that they potentially contain some elements of truth to them. Whether such justifications are reasonable, or whether they are simply a social science papering-over of the glorification of actions that almost all educated people condemn, not glorify, is something that you will have to decide for yourself.

关于偏差行为的主要理论

Major Theories on Deviance

既然我们已经讨论了现实生活中规范的重要性和模糊性,现在让我们转向更学术的表达,并思考一下社会科学中关于偏差的主要理论。所有我们每个人都会表现出一些越轨行为。时不时地,任何一个适应良好的人都会说:“呸,这太不正常了!”然后就放手了,发泄压力以缓解压力。这种有限的越轨行为通常会得到社会的宽恕,甚至赞赏。它赋予了一个人身份和个性。然而,界限是存在的,如果一个人越过了这条界限,他的个性就会变得过于强烈,以至于社会无法承受。社会希望你与众不同,但又不能太过分。

Now that we’ve discussed the importance and ambiguity of norms in real life, let’s now turn to a more academic presentation, and consider the major social science theories of deviance. All of us exhibit some deviant behavior. Every so often, any well-adjusted person says, “Phooey on the norms!” and lets go, blowing off steam to release tension. Such limited deviant behavior is often condoned and even admired by society. It gives the person an identity, a personality. However, there is a line, and if one crosses it, one’s individuality becomes too much for society. Society wants you to be different, but not too different.

关于越轨行为,以及人们为何越界,存在着各种各样的解释。心理学家倾向于探究个体内部——例如他们的成长经历或基因构成。相比之下,社会学家则倾向于寻找个体之外的因素——例如社会内部的社会条件。一旦对这些解释进行更深入的探讨,人们很快就会陷入各种相互竞争的观点之中,每种观点都有其自身的术语和理论细微差别。这些问题我们将留到社会学或心理学课程中讨论,在此仅尝试简要介绍一些术语、主要观点和理论。

There are a variety of perspectives on deviance and explanations of why people step ovver the line. Psychologists tend to look within individuals—into their upbringing or into their genetic makeup. Sociologists, by contrast, tend to look for factors outside individuals—such as social conditions within society. As soon as these explanations are explored more carefully, one quickly gets caught up in competing perspectives, each of which has its own terminology and theoretical nuances. We’ll leave those issues for a sociology or psychology course, and simply try here to introduce you briefly to some of the terminology, major perspectives, and theories.

偏差的心理学和生物学解释

Psychological and Biological Explanations of Deviance

我们之所以会做出某些行为,是因为大脑会释放某些化学物质。这些化学物质告诉我们要采取什么行动。而大脑释放的化学物质又由我们的饮食、基因构成以及成长方式等因素共同决定。对越轨行为的心理学和生物学解释,主要集中于对犯罪行为的生物学或生理学解释。一些心理学上的越轨解释侧重于人格障碍,即由遗传因素或成长环境导致的个体人格异常。这些障碍可能是由于童年时期缺乏情感——缺乏爱,或者被美化犯罪的电视节目洗脑所致。又或者,这些解释更多地侧重于由遗传或心理原因导致的神经学和生物学问题。让我们来思考其中一个子问题:遗传和生物学对越轨和犯罪的倾向性问题。

We do what we do because certain chemicals are released in the brain. These chemicals tell us what actions to perform. The chemicals that are released are themselves determined by a combination of what we eat, our genetic makeup, and the way we are brought up. Psychological and biological explanations of deviance focus on such biological or physiological explanations of criminal behavior. Some of the psychological explanations of deviance focus on personality disorders, abnormalities in individual personalities caused by hereditary factors or by upbringing. These disorders might result, for example, from emotional deprivation—lack of love—in childhood or from being brainwashed by television programs in which crime is glorified. Or, alternatively, these explanations focus more on neurological and biological issues resulting from heredity or psychological causes. Let’s consider one of those sub-issues: the issue of genetic and biological predisposition to deviance and crime.

遗传和生物学上的偏差倾向

Genetic and Biological Predisposition to Deviance

长期以来,犯罪类型存在这一观点在普通民众和一些犯罪学家中一直盛行。例如,19世纪末,著名的意大利犯罪学家切萨雷·龙勃罗梭(Cesare Lombroso)声称,罪犯对疼痛的敏感度低于正常人,而且更容易患癫痫。他发现罪犯的头部后部比前额高,下颌较长,鼻子扁平,胡须稀疏,耳朵较长,还有其他一些身体特征。他将这些特征解释为对早期野蛮祖先特征的返祖性逆转。后来的研究彻底推翻了龙勃罗梭的理论。

The idea that there is a criminal type has long been a popular belief among laypeople and among some criminologists. For example, in the late nineteenth century, noted Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso claimed that criminals are less sensitive to pain and more subject to epilepsy than normal individuals. He found criminals to have heads higher at the rear than at the forehead, longer lower jaws, flattened noses, scanty beards, long ears, and other physical peculiarities. He explained these peculiarities as atavistic reversions to the characteristics of early savage ancestors. Later studies have totally discredited Lombroso’s theory.

现代方法不再关注体型,而是关注基因结构。一些研究认为,某些男性拥有额外的 Y 染色体或“雄性生成”染色体(称为 XYY 综合症)与犯罪行为之间存在因果关系。这类研究的大部分也受到了质疑。但不断出现的新研究表明,某些异常行为是由基因决定的。最终,基因引导行为,因此某些类型的异常行为可能存在遗传倾向。但这种遗传倾向也可能是其他被社会视为积极行为的倾向:成为企业家或领导者。领导者也会违反社会规范。社会科学并不反对所有遗传倾向理论。它反对的是让这些理论掩盖助长个人刻板印象的固有偏见。

Modern approaches have not concentrated on body type but rather on genetic structure. Some studies have argued that a causal link exists between the presence in some males of an extra Y or “male-producing” chromosome (designated the XYY syndrome) and criminal behavior. Much of this work has also been discredited. But new work is continually coming forward that makes the case that some aspects of deviant behavior are genetically determined. Ultimately, genes guide behavior, so there is likely a genetic predisposition to certain types of deviant behavior. But that genetic predisposition is also likely to be a predisposition to other behaviors that are seen by society as positive: being an entrepreneur, or a leader. Leaders also violate society’s norms. Social science doesn’t argue against all genetic predisposition theories. What it does argue against is letting those theories mask inherent prejudices that foster stereotyping of individuals.

社会生物学与偏差

Sociobiology and Deviance

社会生物学的出现,再次引发了对越轨行为的生物学解释。萨诺夫·梅德尼克和卡尔·克里斯蒂安森等人的研究表明,犯罪行为存在一定的生物学倾向。他们发现,如果男孩出生时被收养,且其亲生父母是罪犯,那么他们比父母没有犯罪记录的男孩更容易成为罪犯,即使这两个群体都不知道自己的父母是谁。哈佛大学的詹姆斯·Q·威尔逊和加州大学的理查德·赫恩斯坦也试图为犯罪行为建立生物学基础。

The advent of sociobiology has brought another resurgence of biological explanations of deviant behavior. Sophisticated studies, such as one by Sarnoff Mednick and Karl Christiansen, have suggested some biological predisposition to criminal activity. They found that boys adopted at birth whose biological parents were criminals were more likely to be criminals than those with noncriminal parents, even though neither group knew about their parents. Yet another attempt to establish a biological basis for crime was the work of James Q. Wilson of Harvard and Richard Herrnstein of the University of California.

他们认为,犯罪是将成本(被抓获和受到惩罚)与犯罪收益联系起来的问题。作者认为,对于某些类型的个体,例如那些运动员体格,智商略低于平均水平(92),短期收益大于未来成本;也就是说,对犯罪的惩罚存在滞后性,而犯罪的收益却是即时的。他们认为,这意味着个体的时间偏好(即他们对现在相对于未来的重视程度)在决定一个人是否容易犯罪方面起着重要作用。与大多数关注犯罪生物学基础的理论一样,这些理论也存在很大争议。

They argued that crime is a matter of relating costs (getting caught and punished) with the benefits of crime. The authors hold that for certain types of individuals, such as those with athletic builds and slightly lower than average IQ (92), immediate benefits outweigh the future costs; that is, punishment for crime occurs with a lag, whereas the benefits of crime are instantaneous. They propose that this means individuals’ time preference (how much they value the present relative to the future) plays an important role in determining whether a person is predisposed to crime. As with most theories that focus on a biological basis for crime, these theories are much in debate.

偏差的社会学解释

Sociological Explanations of Deviance

对越轨行为和犯罪有最多论述的社会科学家群体是社会学家。为了向您介绍社会学家的观点,我们将简要讨论差异交往理论、标签理论、控制理论、压力理论和非法机会理论。这些理论属于两大社会学视角:(1)符号互动论视角,该视角认为个人通过从所属群体中学习到的符号来解读社会生活;(2)功能主义视角,该视角认为社会中的所有活动都具有功能。差异交往理论、标签理论和控制理论属于符号互动论视角。压力理论和非法机会理论属于功能主义视角。

The group of social scientists that has had the most to say about deviance and crime is sociologists. To introduce you to the sociologists’ perspective, we will briefly discuss differential association theory, labeling theory, control theory, strain theory, and illegitimate opportunity theory. These theories are part of two broad sociological perspectives: (1) a symbolic interactionist perspective, which sees individuals interpreting social life through symbols that we learn from the groups to which we belong, and (2) a functionalist perspective, which sees all activities in society as having a function. Differential association theory, labeling theory, and control theory fall within the symbolic interactionist perspective. Strain theory and illegitimate opportunity theory fall within the functionalist perspective.

差异性交往理论差异性交往理论认为,偏差行为通常只是符合规范的行为。区别在于,它们是偏离规范的行为。例如,一些群体会形成一套不同的价值观或规范——例如坚韧和冒险倾向——这被认为是偏离主流规范的行为。

Differential Association Theory Differential association theory argues that deviant behavior often is simply behavior that is conforming to norms. The difference is that they are deviant norms. For example, some groups develop a different set of values or norms—such as toughness and the propensity to take risks—considered deviant from the dominant norms.

这一理论由社会学家埃德温·萨瑟兰提出,他认为人们是偏离常规还是顺从,主要受其所属群体的影响。由于不同群体存在不同形式的越轨行为,与不同群体交往的人会经历“过度定义”,在某些群体中显得越轨。例如,街头帮派会要求个人“挺身而出”面对侮辱,如果一个人受到侮辱,就应该以暴力来捍卫自己的荣誉。

This theory, put forward by sociologist Edwin Sutherland, argues that whether people deviate or conform is most influenced by the groups with whom they associate. Because different groups have different forms of deviant behavior, people who associate with different groups experience an “excess of definition” and in some groups seem deviant. For example, street gangs can require individuals to “stand up” to an insult, and if one is insulted, one is expected to respond by defending one’s honor with physical violence.

当差异显著的文化互动时,差异交往理论的作用会更加显著。在东南亚的苗族文化中,找老婆的方式之一是“抓住”她并强行与其发生性关系。在美国,这被称为绑架和强奸,两者都是严重的犯罪行为。

Differential association theory comes more into play when significantly different cultures interact. In the Hmong culture of Southeast Asia, one of the ways one finds a wife is to “capture” her and forcibly have sex with her. In the United States, that is called kidnapping and rape, both of which are serious crimes.

大多数人会同意差异交往理论能够解释一些越轨行为,但也有人认为它不应该被用来纵容越轨行为。社会必须有规范,个人必须学会遵守这些规范,并遵守那些已被编纂成法律的规范。

Most people will agree that differential association theory explains some deviant behavior, but most also argue that it should not be used to condone it. Society must have norms, and individuals must learn to conform to those norms and abide by those that have been codified into law.

标签理论标签理论关注的是赋予人们的标签(例如姓名和声誉标签)的意义。社会赋予群体的这些标签往往会使某些群体的行为被视为犯罪,而另一些群体的行为则被视为非犯罪。社会学家威廉·钱布利斯(William Chambliss)对标签的影响进行了一项经典研究。他研究了一所高中的两组青少年违法者。他将其中一组称为“圣徒”,将另一组称为“粗鲁者”。这两组人都很狂野,酗酒、逃学、破坏公物和偷窃,但圣徒们在老师眼中注定会成功,而粗鲁者则注定会惹麻烦。

Labeling Theory Labeling theory focuses on the significance of labels given to people (such as names and reputational labels). These labels assigned by society to groups can tend to make the actions of certain groups criminal and the actions of certain other groups noncriminal. A classic study of the effects of labeling was done by sociologist William Chambliss. He studied two groups of adolescent lawbreakers in a high school. He labeled one group “the Saints” and the other group “the Roughnecks.” Both groups were wild and were into drinking, truancy, vandalism, and theft, but the Saints were seen by their teachers as headed for success whereas the Roughnecks were seen as headed for trouble.

造成这种区别的原因是家庭背景和社会阶层。圣徒们来自体面的中产阶级家庭。粗鲁者们来自工人阶级家庭。这导致了许多差异:圣徒们有车,所以他们的放荡行为遍布整个城镇,不太显眼;粗鲁者们没有车,他们日复一日地在同一地区进行行为,使他们引人注目,引起了警察的注意。当被警察抓到时,他们也有不同的“互动风格”。圣徒们表面上表示歉意和悔改;他们表现出对警察的尊重,通常会被警告后就被释放。粗鲁者们表现出蔑视,并不断受到严厉的惩罚。结果可想而知:圣徒们成为了医生和律师,而粗鲁者则成为了罪犯。这里的问题显然比对 Chambliss 的研究的简短讨论所能涵盖的要复杂得多,但其思想应该是明确的:标签会对人们受到的待遇产生影响,并且在许多情况下可以自我实现。

The cause of this distinction was family background and social class. The Saints came from respectable, middle-class families. The Roughnecks came from working-class families. This led to a number of differences: The Saints had cars, so their debauchery was spread over the entire town and was less conspicuous; the Roughnecks did not have cars, and their actions, taking place in the same area day after day, made them conspicuous and drew the attention of the police. They also had different “styles of interaction” when caught by police. The Saints were seemingly apologetic and penitent; they showed a seeming respect for the police and generally were let go with warnings. The Roughnecks showed contempt and consistently had the book thrown at them. The results were predictable: The Saints became doctors and lawyers while the Roughnecks became criminals. The issues here are obviously more complicated than can be captured by this brief discussion of Chambliss’s study, but the idea should be clear: Labels make a difference in how people are treated and in many cases can become self-fulfilling.

切萨雷·龙勃罗梭(1835-1909)笔下的罪犯特征:皮肤皱纹过多、颧骨过高、鼻子歪斜、手臂修长、下颌宽大。© Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo

Cesare Lombroso’s (1835–1909) characteristics of a criminal: Excessive wrinkles on skin, excessive cheekbones, a twisted nose, long arms, large jaw, and large chin. © Mary Evans Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo

控制理论 控制理论认为,反叛的欲望更类似于我们的自然欲望,但某些力量阻止我们这样做。控制理论认为,问题不在于“为什么人们会偏离社会规范?”而是“为什么我们没有偏离得更远?”为了防止这种偏离,社会制定了规范和制度,巧妙地控制着我们和我们的行为。许多微妙的控制是由父母在我们童年时期灌输的,因此,我们的家庭类型和我们在童年早期拥有的朋友类型在决定我们会表现出多大的偏差方面起着重要作用。

Control Theory Control theory argues that the desire to rebel is more akin to our natural desires but that certain forces prevent us from doing so. Control theory argues that the question is not, “Why do people deviate from society’s norms?” Rather, the question is, “Why don’t we deviate more than we do?” To prevent such deviation, society has developed norms and institutions that subtly control us and our actions. Much of the subtle control is instilled by parents during our childhood, and thus, the type of family we come from and the type of friends we have in early childhood play major roles in determining how much deviance we will exhibit.

压力理论压力理论属于功能主义社会学的视角。功能主义者认为,偏差是社会的必要组成部分;它阐明了道德界限,并它肯定规范;并且它促进社会团结并带来必要的社会变革。成功的工业化社会必须激起人们的不满情绪,以在他们心中灌输进步和改善自我的愿望。由社会学家罗伯特·默顿和其他功能主义者发展的压力理论认为,当社会结构没有提供获得经济成功的平等机会,而是在所有人心中灌输对经济成功的功能性追求时,就会产生社会压力。这种社会压力会导致各种各样的反应,其中之一就是犯罪。请注意压力理论和心理学理论之间的区别。斯特劳布理论认为越轨是社会的产物,而不是个人的产物。在压力理论中,社会创造了犯罪和罪犯。

Strain Theory Strain theory falls within the functionalist sociological perspective. Functionalists argue that deviance is a necessary part of a society; it clarifies moral boundaries and affirms norms; and it promotes social unity and brings about necessary social change. Successful industrialized societies must arouse discontent in people to instill within them the desire to advance and better themselves. Strain theory, which was developed by sociologist Robert Merton and other functionalists, argues that when the social structure does not provide equal access for economic success but instills in all people a functional striving for economic success, the result is a social strain. This social strain can result in a variety of reactions, one of which is crime. Notice the difference between strain theory and the psychological theories. Straub theory sees deviance as a product of society, not of individuals. In strain theory society creates crime and criminals.

非法机会理论与功能主义犯罪观点稍有不同的是非法机会理论,由社会学家理查德·克洛沃德和劳埃德·俄林提出。该理论认为,犯罪无处不在,但不同社会阶层的犯罪方式不同。所有个人都渴望获得物质上的成功,但社会底层在合法获得成功方面面临着巨大障碍。然而,他们却拥有非法机会结构——通过贩毒、拉皮条和赌博等“非法活动”赚取更多钱财的机会。社会将所有这些都视为犯罪。特权阶层则不会面临这些障碍,他们的犯罪是“白领犯罪”,如逃税和虚假广告,这些犯罪不会受到太多起诉,也不被普遍视为犯罪。

Illegitimate Opportunity Theory A slightly different take on the functionalist perspective on crime is the illegitimate opportunity theory, put forward by sociologists Richard Cloward and Lloyd Ohlin. This theory argues that crime is all around us but that different social classes have distinct styles of crime. All individuals are imbued with the desire to achieve material success, but the lower social classes have significant barriers to achieving that success legally. They are, however, presented with illegitimate opportunity structures—opportunities to make larger amounts of money through “hustles” such as drug dealing, pimping, and gambling. Society sees all these as crimes. The more privileged class does not face the barriers and its crimes are “white-collar crimes” such as tax evasion and false advertising, which are not prosecuted as much and are not so widely seen as crimes.

偏差的经济解释

Economic Explanations of Deviance

经济学家倾向于透过成本和收益的棱镜看待所有问题。因此,他们对犯罪和越轨行为的解释是,犯罪的收益大于成本,而减少犯罪和越轨行为的方法是增加其成本。例如,死刑会增加个人犯罪的成本,而经济学家认为死刑有助于防止杀人。批评这种经济解释的人认为,杀人通常是一种非理性行为——一种激情犯罪,刑罚在其中只起到很小的作用;因此,死刑不会显著减少杀人。谁是对的?目前尚不清楚;双方仍在就实证证据进行辩论。

Economists tend to see all issues through a prism of costs and benefits. Thus, their explanation for crime and deviance is that the benefits of crime exceed the costs and that the way to decrease crime and deviance is to increase its costs. For example, the death penalty increases the cost of a crime to an individual, and economists argue that having the death penalty helps prevent killings. Critics of such economic explanations argue that killing generally is an irrational act—a crime of passion in which the penalty plays only a very small role; thus, having the death penalty will not significantly reduce killings. Who’s right? That’s unclear; both sides are still debating the empirical evidence.

经济学家方法的另一个含义是,低收入人群比高收入人群更有可能犯下“等额收益”犯罪,因为高收入人群入狱的成本更高。同样,富人比穷人更难被罚款吓倒,因为同样的罚款对富人来说意义不大。(芬兰对这一观点有一个有趣的应用。它使所有交通罚款都与收入相关,因此富人支付的罚款远高于穷人。因此,一个真正富有的人如果被抓到超速行驶,可能需要支付20万美元。)

Another implication of the economist’s approach is the proposition that lower-income individuals are more likely to commit an “equal payoff” crime than are high-income individuals because the cost to the higher-income individuals of going to jail is higher. Similarly, a rich person is less likely to be deterred by a fine than a poorer person because the same fine has less meaning to the rich person. (Finland has an interesting application of this view. It makes all traffic fines income-sensitive, so that a rich person pays a much higher fine than a poor person. Thus, a really rich person might have to pay $200,000 if caught speeding.)

即使是经济学家也承认,他们的成本效益方法在研究犯罪(以及许多其他问题)时遗漏了很多内容。但他们认为,这种方法的简洁性和清晰的表述往往能够揭示其他社会科学方法所忽略的一些问题。

Even economists admit that much is left out of their cost-benefit approach to crime (and to many issues). But they argue that its simplicity and clear statement often shed some light on the issues missed by other social science approaches.

关于偏差的各种观点的总结

Summary of Various Perspectives on Deviance

我们的讨论仅仅触及了各种越轨理论。我们确信,许多理论已经引起了你的反应,例如“但是……怎么样?” 要真正理解这些问题,你必须学习心理学或社会学关于越轨的课程。你应该从本课程中了解到,关于越轨的理论有很多,但共识并不多。然而,在继续之前,让我们指出,这些理论并非互相排斥,我们对它们的简要概述并未充分展现它们的价值。越轨并非一个简单的问题,真正理解这个问题需要的研究远远超出了这类概述课程所能涵盖的范围。

Our discussion has only touched on the various theories of deviance. Many, we are sure, have led to reactions from you such as “But how about. . .?” To really get into those issues, you’ll have to take a psychology or sociology course on deviance. What you should get out of this course is the knowledge that there are many theories of deviance, and not a lot of agreement. Before we move on, however, let us point out that the theories are not mutually exclusive, and our brief overview of them has not done them justice. Deviance is not a simple issue, and truly understanding that issue requires study beyond that which can be presented in an overview course such as this.

犯罪、法律与秩序

Crime, Law, and Order

越轨行为具有学术价值。大多数外行人对越轨行为的学术概念不太感兴趣,他们更感兴趣的是某种越轨行为的狭义概念:犯罪。所以既然我们已经了解了关于偏差行为的主要学术理论,现在让我们将其与政策联系起来,讨论犯罪。犯罪可以定义为违反已编纂成法的社会规范的偏差行为。当政府通过法律将偏差行为定为非法时,偏差行为就构成犯罪。这意味着犯罪在很大程度上取决于社会如何将偏差行为与犯罪联系起来。在其他条件相同的情况下,社会对偏差行为的容忍度越高,犯罪率就越低。

Deviance is of scholarly interest. Most laypeople are less interested in the scholarly concept of deviance, and more interested in the narrower concept of a certain type of deviance: crime. So now that we’ve been through the major academic theories of deviance, let’s relate that theory to policy and discuss crime. A crime can be defined as deviant behavior that violates society's norms that have been codified into the law. Deviance becomes crime when the government passes a law that makes deviant behavior illegal. This means that crime is highly dependent on the way in which a society relates deviant behavior to crime. Other things being equal, the more tolerant the society is to deviant behavior, the less crime a society will have.

之前,我们在讨论法律时指出,美国在许多国际司法体系排名中名列前茅。为什么美国表现如此糟糕?大多数观察家认为,美国司法体系的问题与其说在于其法律传统的总体结构,不如说在于其实施。理论上,美国的司法体系听起来很棒;但在实践中,它却有很多不足之处。

Earlier, in our discussion of the law, we stated that the United States did not come out well in many international rankings of the success of its system of justice. Why did the United States not do so well? Most observers believe that the problem with the US system of justice is not so much with the general structure of the legal tradition, but with its implementation. In theory, the US system of justice sounds great; in practice, it leaves much to be desired.

我们将重点讨论美国司法系统的三个相互关联的问题。

We will focus our discussion on three interrelated problems with the US system of justice.

  • 首先,它可能试图做得太多——以民众不愿接受的方式控制民众。
  • The first is that it may be trying to do too much—to control its population in ways that the population does not want to be controlled.
  • 二是司法实施不平等。
  • The second is that there is an unequal application of the implementation of justice.
  • 第三,美国注重惩罚犯罪,而非提供指导,这既不公平,又成本高昂。惩罚,而非指导,在美国刑事司法体系中已经变得无处不在。它甚至融入了警务体系。
  • The third is that the United States focus on punishing crime, rather than on providing guidance, is both unfair and outrageously expensive. Punishment, not guidance, has become pervasive in the US criminal justice system. It is even built into its system of policing.

这三个问题结合在一起,带来了大多数人不喜欢的结果,例如下面列出的结果。

These three problems combine to bring about outcomes, such as those listed next, that most people don’t like.

  • 美国监狱里的囚犯太多了——人均囚犯数量是大多数其他国家的十倍。美国人口占世界人口的5%,但却关押着全球25%的囚犯。
  • There are too many people in US jails and prisons—ten times as many per capita than most other countries. The United States makes up 5 percent of the world population, but has 25 percent of the world’s jailed prisoners.
  • 被监禁的囚犯中,有太多是年轻的黑人男性。60%的囚犯是黑人或少数族裔,尽管这些群体在总人口中所占比例要小得多。预计三分之一的黑人男性一生中都会在监狱里度过一段时间。
  • Far too many of those imprisoned are young black men. Sixty percent of the prison population is black or an ethnic minority, even though that group makes up a much smaller percentage of the population. One in three black men can be expected to spend some time in prison over their lifetime.
  • 许多贫困人口和少数族裔,特别是黑人,对美国警察和司法系统失去了信心,他们认为自己会受到不平等和不公平的对待,因此不愿与之合作。
  • Many poor and minority groups, especially blacks, have lost faith in the US policing and justice system; they believe that they will be treated unequally and unfairly, and, therefore, they do not cooperate with it.

那么美国应该怎么做呢?让我们通过思考这三个问题及其与结果的关系来探讨这个问题。

So what should the United States do? Let’s explore that question by considering the three problems and how they relate to outcomes.

问题一:美国是否试图对个人施加过多的控制?

Problem 1: Is the United States Trying to Exert Too Much Control Over Individuals?

一个社会限制行为的法律越多,违法的人就越多。20世纪80年代,美国的犯罪率和入狱人数大幅上升,而当时正是美国发起禁毒战争的时期。将以前不违法的行为定为非法,并严格执行以前没有严格执行的法律,几乎可以肯定地增加犯罪率。以前不构成犯罪的行为,现在也构成了犯罪。

The more laws a society has restricting behavior, the more people are going to violate the laws. Crime and the number of people in prison increased in the United States significantly in the 1980s, precisely the time that the United States instituted a war on drugs. Making something illegal that was previously not illegal, and strictly enforcing laws that previously were not strictly enforced increase crime almost by definition. Actions that previously were not crimes now are crimes.

通过观察禁毒战争引入后监狱中囚犯的遭遇,你就能看出这场战争的影响。禁毒战争始于20世纪70年代,并于20世纪80年代真正开始。图8.1显示了1925年至2020年期间监狱或看守所中的囚犯人数。(监狱是指监禁时间少于一年的当地场所——县或市设有监狱。监狱是指监禁时间超过一年的场所。州和联邦政府也设有监狱。)

You can see the effect of the war on drugs, which began in the 1970s and started in earnest in the 1980s, by looking at what happened to people in prison when it was introduced. In Figure 8.1, which shows the number of people in jail or prison from 1925 to 2020, we do so. (Jail refers to places of local incarceration for less than one year—a county or a city will have jails. Prisons refer to places of incarceration for longer than a year. States and the federal government have prisons.)

早在20世纪20年代,美国就曾试图通过禁酒令(Prohibition)来阻止人们做出其认为有害的行为,该法律禁止销售和饮用酒精饮料。然而,人们并没有遵守禁酒令,“犯罪”却增加了——这并不是因为人们的行为与以前不同,而是因为法律将以前不构成犯罪的行为定为犯罪。归根结底,如果社会限制行为的法律减少,犯罪率和入狱人数就会减少。

The United States had previously tried to deter people from an action that it considered bad for people back in the 1920s with Prohibition, laws that banned the sale and drinking of alcohol. People did not follow the Prohibition laws, and “crime” increased—not because people were doing something different than before, but because actions that previously had not been a crime were made a crime by the law. The bottom line is that if society has fewer laws restricting action, society will have less crime and fewer people in prison.

图8.1美国囚犯人数增加(来源:司法统计局)

Figure 8.1The increase in prisoners in the United States.(Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics)

犯罪分类说美国应该对吸毒采取更宽松的态度​​,并不是说政府不应该将吸毒视为异常行为,甚至不将其视为犯罪。这只是说,最好不要通过将人关进监狱来处理这个问题。社会可以认为吸毒是愚蠢的,应该强烈阻止,但仍然认为它不应该被视为犯罪。社会阻止的行为和社会视为犯罪的行为之间的这种区分导致了处理毒品危机的另一种方式。社会可以将吸毒作为它试图阻止的一种行为,但它可以通过广告和高税收来阻止它,而不是通过逮捕人。即使社会想将吸毒保持为犯罪,也可以降低该犯罪的严重性。

Classifying Crimes To say that the United States should take a looser view of drug use is not to say that government should not see drug use as deviant, or even as a crime. It is simply to say that it might be best not to deal with it by putting people in jail. Society can think of drug use as stupid and something that should be strongly discouraged and still believe that it should not be treated as a crime. This differentiation between actions society discourages and actions society treats as crime leads to an alternative way of dealing with the drug crisis. Society can keep drug use as an action it attempts to discourage, but it can discourage it by advertisements and high taxes, not by arresting people. Even if society wants to keep drug use a crime, the degree of seriousness of that crime could be reduced.

要了解如何做到这一点,您需要知道在刑事司法系统中,犯罪是按严重程度分级的。预谋杀人或恶性攻击等重罪是最严重的罪行。根据州的不同,重罪进一步细分为 A、B、C 级(等等)重罪。例如,在纽约,谋杀是 A 级重罪,二级攻击是 D 级重罪。每个级别的重罪都与特定的处罚指导相关。轻罪是比重罪轻的罪行。轻罪的一个例子是过失杀人,即一个人意外地而不是有预谋地杀人。轻罪也分为子分类。最后,还有一些违法行为— — 被认为比轻罪更轻的罪行。一个人可以对违法行为“不抗辩”,而违法行为不会出现在司法部记录中。重罪和轻罪的情况并非如此。因此,吸毒行为被认定为违法行为而非轻罪或重罪的次数越多,入狱人数就越少。表 8.1总结了三种犯罪类型。

To see how this would be done, you need to know that in the criminal justice system crimes are gradated by degree of seriousness. Felonies such as premeditated murder or aggravated assault, are the most serious crimes. Felonies are further subclassified into Class A, B, C (etc.) felonies depending on the state. For example, in New York, murder is a Class A Felony, and assault in the second degree is a Class D Felony. Each level of felony is associated with a given penalty guidance. Misdemeanors are crimes that are less serious than felonies. An example of a misdemeanor is involuntary manslaughter, where one kills someone by accident rather than doing it with forethought. Misdemeanors are also broken into subclassifications. Finally, there are infractions—crimes that are considered less serious than a misdemeanor. One can plead “no contest” to an infraction and the infraction will not appear on one’s Department of Justice record. That is not the case with felonies and misdemeanors. Thus, the more drug use is treated as an infraction, not as a misdemeanor or felony, the fewer the people in prison. Table 8.1 summarizes the three types of crimes.

通过废除针对无受害人犯罪的法律来减少犯罪。吸毒属于一类通常被称为无受害人犯罪的犯罪。卖淫和赌博也属于这一类。尽管大多数人同意诸如预谋杀人之类的暴力犯罪应该被定为犯罪,但对于贩卖或吸食大麻是否应该被定为犯罪,人们的共识却少得多。在全国范围内,这是一种犯罪;但在某些州,它并非犯罪;而在舆论的评判下,它既是犯罪,又不是犯罪,这取决于你与谁交谈。在公共场所饮酒是另一种人们对其是否应该被定为犯罪存在分歧的行为。

Decreasing Crime by Eliminating Laws Against Victimless Crime Drug use falls into a class of crimes often called victimless crimes. Prostitution and gambling also fall into this category. Whereas most people agree that violent crimes such as premeditated murder should be a crime, there is far less agreement whether something like selling or smoking pot should be a crime. Nationally, it is a crime; but in some states it is not, and in the court of public opinion it both is and isn’t depending on who you are talking to. Drinking in public is another behavior upon which people disagree about whether it should be a crime.

如果美国对此类活动采取更宽容的态度,甚至对禁止此类活动的法律执行采取更宽容的态度,美国的“犯罪”将会显著减少。举个例子。在寄宿制大学校园里,未成年人饮酒现象很普遍,但禁止饮酒的法律很少得到执行,所以这并不构成犯罪。大学生可以逍遥法外,而非大学生通常不行。

Were the United States to take a more lenient view of such activities, or even a more tolerant approach to the enforcement of the laws prohibiting such activities, “crime” in the United States would be significantly reduced. Let me give an example. There is a lot of underage drinking on residential college campuses, but the laws against it are seldom enforced, so it doesn’t show up as a crime. College students are given a pass, whereas noncollege students are often not.

表8.1

犯罪分类
分类 预计罚款
重罪 罚款、缓刑、在县监狱服刑 1 年或可能在州监狱服刑 1 年以上、假释
轻罪 罚款、缓刑,最高可判处 1 年监禁
违规 只罚款,不缓刑,不坐牢

政治光谱两边的众多社会科学家都认为,禁毒战争是美国无法取胜的战争。尽管美国应该竭尽所能阻止吸毒,但试图通过将吸毒定罪和严格执行禁毒法来阻止吸毒弊大于利。例如,2011年,一份由巴西前总统、美国前国务卿乔治·舒尔茨和美国前美联储主席保罗·沃尔克共同签署的关于全球毒品政策的重要研究报告得出结论:禁毒战争已经彻底失败,为此投入的数万亿美元几乎没有任何效果。该报告建议采取新的非刑事化和劝阻性政策,以削弱有组织犯罪的势力,减少美国的囚犯人数。

A wide range of social scientists on both sides of the political spectrum believe that the war on drugs is a war that the United States cannot win, and that while the United States should do whatever it can to discourage drug use, trying to prevent drug use by criminalization and strict enforcement of drug use laws causes more harm than good. For example, in 2011, in a major global study of drug policy—signed by a former president of Brazil, former US Secretary of State George Shultz, and former US Fed Chair Paul Volcker—came to the conclusion that the war on drugs has totally failed and that the trillion dollars spent on it have served little purpose. It recommended a new policy of decriminalization and discouragement as a way of undercutting the power of organized crime and reducing the number of prisoners in the United States.

犯罪分类在确定社会各个阶层的犯罪数量方面也发挥着重要作用。例如,在 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代,持有快克可卡因(一种在黑人社区流行的可卡因)的处罚力度要大于持有可卡因(在白人社区更为普遍)。这些“罪行”的处罚有何不同?在一项促成 2010 年《公平量刑法案》的研究中,研究人员发现,被控持有 1 克快克可卡因的人平均受到的刑罚与被控持有 100 克可卡因的人相同,尽管快克可卡因和可卡因在分子上几乎相同。即使在 2010 年法律修改之后,仍然存在显著差异。平均而言,被控持有仅 1 克快克可卡因的人的刑罚与持有 18 克可卡因的人相同。

The classification of crimes can also play an important role in determining the amount of crime in various subsectors of society. For example in the 1980s and 1990s, crack possession (a type of cocaine that was prevalent in black communities) was enforced more strongly than was cocaine possession (more prevalent in white communities.) How differently were these “crimes” enforced? In a study which led to the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, researchers found that people charged with the possession of one gram of crack received on average the same sentence as people charged with the possession of 100 grams of cocaine, even though crack and cocaine are almost identical molecularly. Even after the law change in 2010, there was still a significant difference. On average, those charged with possession of just one gram of crack are given the same sentence as those found in possession of 18 grams of cocaine.

造成快克可卡因和可卡因刑罚差异的原因有很多,不仅仅是因为快克可卡因在黑人社区更为普遍。还因为平均而言,白人往往更容易获得良好的法律咨询和代理,因为他们更有可能负担得起。这暴露了司法系统的另一个问题。如果你能请得起一位好律师,你通常可以设法将刑期减至较低级别,甚至免除。富人和中产阶级可以请得起一位好律师,而贫困的少数族裔往往请不起。

There are many reasons for this difference between crack and cocaine sentences, and it was not just because crack was more prevalent in the black community. It was also because, on average, whites tended to have more access to good legal advice and representation because they were more likely to afford it. That captures another problem with the justice system. If you can afford a good lawyer, you can often manage to get your sentence reduced to a lower-level crime—or even dismissed. Rich and middle-class people can afford a good lawyer; poor minorities often cannot.

囚犯们(中间的女教员除外)在挪威第二大监狱哈尔登监狱参加烹饪课程。© PHOTOSHELTER.COM —AlexMasi

Inmates (except female instructor in the middle) take cooking course at Halden Prison, Norway’s second largest prison. © PHOTOSHELTER.COM—AlexMasi

即使社会未能完全将吸毒合法化,也能通过降低吸毒和贩毒的分类来减少入狱人数。如果社会保留现有的所有犯罪类型,但降低大多数犯罪的总体分类水平,那么即使对违反规范的行为施加压力,社会也能减少入狱人数。例如,许多无受害人的犯罪,例如吸毒和卖淫,都可以被视为违法行为。

Even if society does not totally decriminalize drug use, it can reduce the number of people imprisoned by reducing the classification of drug use and sales. Were society to keep all the same crimes that they currently have, but reduce the general level of classifications of most crime, society could reduce the number of people in jail and prison even while maintaining pressure against the norm violations. For example, many victimless crimes, such as drug use and prostitution, could be treated as infractions.

社会甚至可能考虑设立第四级犯罪,低于违法行为——我们称之为更(记住它的发音是mor-ray)违法行为。什么立法机构可以像现行法律一样,决定“更多违法行为”。1这些法律将不再作为罪行,而是作为更多违法行为载入史册。赋予立法机构定义道德规范的职责,可以使其发挥有益作用,而不会制造罪犯。立法机构正在决定合理行为的指南

Society might even consider creating a fourth level of crime that is below an infraction—let’s call it a more (remember it is pronounced mor-ray) violation. What are “more violations” could be decided on by legislatures, just as laws are currently.1 These laws would be put on the books not as crimes, but as more violations. Giving legislatures the duty to define mores could let them serve a useful purpose without creating criminals. They are deciding on guides for reasonable behavior.

新奥尔良的一所监狱。© Lindsay Brice/Getty Images

A prison in New Orleans. © Lindsay Brice/Getty Images

“更严重的违规”不会被归类为犯罪,而是会被归类为越轨行为,并且不会受到任何可强制执行的禁令。违规者不会面临任何罚款或监禁,但可能会受到公开谴责和羞辱。(目前确实存在此类“羞辱性”惩罚。例如,一些“罪犯”被判处佩戴“我是个白痴”的标语。你可以在网上找到许多法官判处的此类富有想象力的惩罚。)许多州在新冠疫情期间实施的“口罩强制令”就是一个可能奏效的例子。这些规定在很大程度上是无法执行的,如果严格执行,可能会造成严重破坏,并使许多人成为“罪犯”。但如果这些法律没有得到执行,就会让其他人因为不遵守法律而感到愤怒。如果是更严重的违规,就不需要强制执行,但社会压力可能会鼓励人们戴口罩。

A “more violation” would not be classified as a crime; instead it would be classified as a deviant behavior, and there would be no enforceable-by-force prohibition of the action. Violators would not face any fine or jail time, but they might face a public rebuke and shame. (Such “shame” punishments currently take place. For example, some “criminals” have been sentenced to wear “I am an idiot” signs. You can find a number of such imaginative punishments that judges have given online.) An example of where this might work could be in the “mask mandates” that many states imposed during the Covid pandemic. These were largely unenforceable, and, if strictly enforced, would have likely created havoc and made numerous individuals “criminals.” But when these laws were not enforced, it made others mad that people were not following the law. Were it a more violation, enforcement would have been not required, but social pressure could have encouraged people to wear masks.

问题二:在美国,正义是否平等地适用于所有人?

Problem 2: Is Justice Applied Equally to All in the United States?

现在让我们来看看美国在国际司法系统比较中表现不佳的第二个原因——警务和法庭的执行情况。虽然美国法律的理论结构听起来很棒,但其执行情况却远非完美。第一个问题在于警务。虽然与大多数其他国家相比,美国警察在执法方面做得很好,但在少数族裔,尤其是年轻黑人男性的问题上,他们做得并不好。原因之一是少数族裔地区的警察通常不能反映该地区的种族背景。这使得少数族裔和警察很难相互理解,难以达到指导工作所需的程度。人们担心警察对少数族裔的偏见

Let’s now turn to a second reason for the United States’ poor showing in international comparisons of justice systems—implementation both in policing and in court. While the theoretical structure of US law sounds great, the implementation of that law is far from great. The first problem is in policing. While police do a good job in enforcing the law compared to mosst other countries, they do not do such a good job when it comes to minorities, especially young black men. One reason why is that police in minority areas often do not reflect the ethnic background of the area. This makes it hard for minorities and police to relate and understand each other to the degree that is necessary for mentoring to work. Concern about police bias against

少数族裔的抗议活动引发了多个城市的“撤资警察”运动。这些运动认为,警察机构本质上是种族主义的,只有彻底重组现有机构才能实现改革。

minorities has led to “defund the police” movements in a number of cities. These movements argue that the police establishment is inherently racist and can only be reformed by totally restructuring the current institutions.

第二个问题在于法院和司法体系。要利用美国的法律体系,你需要一名律师,而美国律师费高昂,低收入人群根本无法在美国司法体系中获得公平对待。富裕人士可以聘请昂贵的律师,通过谈判降低犯罪率,或利用法律上的技术细节让客户脱身,而穷人却做不到。

A second problem is in the courts and legal system. To use the US legal system you need a lawyer, and with the high cost of lawyers in the United States, lower-income individuals simply do not have the ability to get fair treatment from the US legal system. Whereas a well-off person can hire an expensive lawyer who can negotiate an offense down, or get a client off on a legal technicality, poor people cannot.

阻碍低收入人群获得司法公正待遇的原因不仅仅是高昂的律师费。向被告收取部分起诉费用的做法使情况变得更糟,这些费用要么是罚款,要么是要求被告支付使用法院系统的费用。如果罚款或要求报销的法院费用达到个人无力支付的水平——在许多司法管辖区都是如此——那么结果是,尽管一个人的罪行可能很轻,但他最终还是会被关进监狱,不是因为罪行本身,而是因为没有支付与罪行相关的罚款。一个极端的例子是一名男子因偷窃一罐 2 美元的汽水而被捕。他因未支付罚款而服刑 12 个月。

It is not only the high cost of lawyers that prevents low-income individuals from getting a fair treatment from the justice system. The situation is made worse by the practice of charging defendants for part of the cost of prosecution, either in the form of a fine or in the form of a required payment for the use of the court system. If a fine or required reimbursement of court expenses is at a level an individual cannot pay—and in many jurisdictions that is the case—the result is that, while a person’s crime may have been minor, the person ends up in jailor prison, not for the crime but for not paying the fine associated with it. An extreme example is of a man arrested for stealing a $2 can of soda. He served twelve months in jail for failure to pay the fine he was given.

穷人被捕时常常会感到处境艰难,他或她可能会承认自己没有犯下的罪行。这是怎么发生的?当一个人被捕或上法庭时,通常会就如何定性犯罪进行重要的谈判——同样的罪行可以被归类为重罪、轻罪或违法行为。重罪会带来长期影响,伴随人的一生。被定罪的重罪犯通常不能投票或拥有枪支,而且很难找工作。如果一个人认罪,检察官通常会对较低级别的指控提出认罪协议。如果一个人没有好的法律代表,通常对较轻级别的罪行认罪是最好的选择,因为即使他或她是无辜的,他或她也很有可能被定罪。

Oftentimes a poor person feels in an almost impossible position when arrested, and he or she may plead guilty to a crime he or she did not commit. How can that happen? When a person is arrested or in court, there are usually significant negotiations about how a crime will be classified—the same crime can be classified as a felony, misdemeanor, or infraction. Felonies have long-term consequences that carry through one’s entire life. A convicted felon often cannot vote or own a firearm, and can find it very difficult to find a job. Oftentimes, prosecutors will offer plea deals to lower-level charges if a person pleads guilty. If a person doesn’t have good legal representation, often pleading guilty to a lesser-category crime is the best option, because, even if he or she is innocent, there is a high probability he or she will be convicted.

面对这种情况,对许多穷人来说,司法系统与其说是司法系统,不如说更像是一个“敲诈勒索”系统。一旦你被抓到,它就会要求你支付并支付赔偿金,以免自己越来越深地陷入体制。大多数社会科学研究人员认为,法院对待穷人的方式需要进行重大改革,以便任何收入水平的人都不会觉得自己被“敲诈勒索”。

Faced with such situations, for many of the poor, the justice system seems more like a “shakedown” system than a justice system. Once you are caught in it, it requires you to pay and pay to keep from getting brought deeper and deeper into the system. Most social science researchers believe that significant reform is needed in how poor people are treated by the courts so that individuals of any income level do not have the perception that they are being “shaken down.”

最近的研究表明,美国法院和法律系统的缺陷在美国司法系统对待少数族裔的方式上尤为明显。作家兼法律学者米歇尔·亚历山大在她的著作《新吉姆·克劳法》中指出,就像之前的奴隶制和吉姆·克劳种族隔离制度一样,大规模监禁创造了一种剥夺黑人社区权利的种族等级制度。她的观点源于这样的证据:由于黑人社区的执法率更高以及量刑政策不同,禁毒战争对黑人造成了不成比例的不利影响。结果是,三分之一的黑人男性在其一生中可能会入狱,尽管白人犯下毒品犯罪的可能性与白人相同甚至更大。这些黑人男性随后成为二等公民,无法投票、担任陪审员或养活自己和家人,这使得贫困和歧视的循环永无止境,而这又反过来导致更大规模的监禁。

Recent scholarship has suggested that the shortcomings of our courts and legal system are especially pronounced in the way the US justice system treats racial minorities. In her boo The New Jim Crow, author and legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that, just like the systems of slavery and Jim Crow segregation that came before it, mass incarceration has created a racial caste system that disenfranchises black communities. Her thesis stems from the evidence that the war on drugs has disproportionately disadvantaged black people, owing to higher rates of enforcement in black communities and disparate sentencing policies. The result has been that one-third of black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetimes, despite white people being just as likely or even more likely to commit drug crimes. These black men then become second-class citizens unable to vote, serve on juries, or support themselves and their families, which perpetuates the cycle of poverty and discrimination that feeds back into even more mass incarceration.

问题三:确定司法和刑事制度的目的

Problem 3: Deciding the Purpose of the Justice and Criminal System

现在,让我们来谈谈许多社会科学家对美国司法系统不满的第三个原因。它关注的目标错误。让我们区分一下两种观点。一种观点认为,司法系统的目的应该是惩罚罪犯,让他们重回正轨。另一种观点认为,司法系统的目的应该是为犯错的人提供指导;对大多数社会科学家来说,其目标是让人们在得到指导后尽快重返街头,成为有生产力的公民。这两种观点导致了截然不同的执法方式,以及对一个人最终入狱后应该如何处理的看法。

Now let us turn to our third reason why many social scientists have problems with the US justice system. It is focusing on the wrong goal. Let’s distinguish two views. One is that the purpose of the justice system should be to punish criminals and get them off the street. The second is that the purpose of the justice system should be to provide guidance for people who have made a mistake; the goal, for most social scientists, is to return people to the street to be productive citizens as soon as they have gotten that guidance. The two views lead to quite different methods of enforcement and views of what should happen if a person ends up in jail or prison.

“惩罚”观点认为,警察的职责是抓捕罪犯,并将他们关进监狱,以阻止他们再次犯罪。监狱里的人越多,阻止犯罪的人就越多,警察的职责也就越完善。如果持这种观点,监狱就应该尽可能地令人不快——否则就不再是惩罚了。将足够多的罪犯关进监狱,犯罪率就会下降。此外,对犯罪入狱的恐惧也会降低犯罪率。根据这种观点,21世纪初犯罪率下降是因为许多罪犯被关进了监狱,而其他人则因为害怕受到惩罚而不敢犯罪。

The “punishment” view sees the role of police as catching criminals and putting them behind bars so that they cannot commit more crime. The more people in prison, the more people are being prevented from committing crime, and the better the police are doing their job. If one holds this view, prison should be as unpleasant as possible—otherwise it wouldn’t be punishment. Put enough of the criminals behind bars and crime is reduced. Moreover, the fear of imprisonment for crime reduces crime. According to this view, crime fell in the early 2000s because many of the criminals had been put in jail, and others were prevented from committing crime by the fear of punishment.

“引导”观点对司法系统的作用有不同的看法。它认为监狱是改造一个人的最后手段。监狱时间不是惩罚的时间,而是学习的时间。监狱的安排应该使一个人尽快融入社会,并做好重返社会的准备。在某些情况下,改造可能是不可能的,但在大多数情况下是可能的。在“执法作为引导”的观点中,大多数监狱中的人不应被视为反社会者或天生的罪犯。相反,他们应该被视为做出了错误决定、没有得到适当的社会化,或以某种方式被困在了规定犯罪定义的体系的错误一边的人。

The “guidance” view has a different take on the role of the justice system. It sees prison as a last resort in rehabilitating a person. Prison time is not a time for punishment but a time for learning. It should be structured so that a person is socialized and prepared to go back into society as fast as possible. In certain cases, rehabilitation may be impossible, but in most cases it is possible. In the “law enforcement as guidance” view, most of the people in prison should not be thought of as sociopaths or natural-born criminals. Rather they should be thought of as people who made a bad decision, did not get appropriately socialized, or somehow got caught on the wrong side of the system that specifies what a crime is.

这种指导性观点认为,美国现行的监狱制度往往会制造犯罪。一旦一个人被卷入刑事司法系统,就很难逃脱。监狱往往会磨练人的意志,教他们如何成为罪犯。刚从监狱或看守所出来的人通常没有技能,也没有赚钱的途径。有犯罪前科的人很难找到工作,而任何被归类为重罪犯的人几乎都找不到工作。由于无法找到工作,刚出狱的人几乎别无选择,只能犯罪。整个过程变成了恶性循环,让人感觉自己被敲诈勒索。这会强化任何反社会行为,并培养出惯犯,而他们实际上必须被关进监狱才能保护社会。

This guidance view sees the US prison system, as it is currently run, as too often creating criminals. Once a person gets caught up in the criminal justice system, it is difficult to escape. Prison often hardens people and teaches them to be criminals. People getting out of prison or jail generally have no skills and no way of earning income. People with records have a difficult time finding jobs, and anyone classified as a felon has an almost impossible time finding a job. Given the inability to get work, someone coming out of prison is left with almost no alternative to crime. The entire process becomes a downward spiral and results in the feeling of being shaken down. That reinforces any antisocial behavior and creates hardened criminals, who actually do have to be put in prison to protect society.

这种指导性观点认为,罪犯和社会领袖之间的区别通常很小。尤其是在与尚处于社会化阶段的年轻人打交道时,更是如此。过早严格执行法律,可能会把潜在的领袖——那些天生叛逆、反抗他们认为不公平待遇的人——变成罪犯。

This guidance view sees the difference between a criminal and a leader in society as often very small. This is especially true when one is dealing with young people who are still in the process of being socialized. Strict enforcement of a law too early can turn potential leaders—individuals who are naturally rebellious and who rebel against what they consider unfair treatment—into criminals.

一些社会科学家将美国的刑事司法方法称为“从学校到监狱的管道”方法,这种方法将对相对较轻的违法行为进行早期逮捕,从而破坏儿童的长期把原本可以成为有为公民的人变成罪犯。正如前司法部长埃里克·霍尔德所说,对轻微违规行为的过度严格执行可能会“对年轻人的长期福祉产生负面影响,增加他们将来接触青少年和刑事司法系统的可能性”。

Some social scientists call the US approach to criminal justice the “school-to-prison pipeline” approach in which early arrests for relatively minor infractions destroy a child’s long-term prospects and create a criminal out of someone who could have been a productive citizen. As former Attorney General Eric Holder put it, excessively strict enforcement of minor infractions of rules can have “negative effects on the long-term well-being of our young people, increasing their likelihood of future contact with the juvenile and criminal justice systems.”

© 大卫·G·布朗

© David G. Brown

惩罚与引导两种观点对司法系统作用的差异,可以从本章引言中看出,该引言比较了两名囚犯的待遇。挪威遵循“引导”观点,而美国遵循惩罚观点。不同的结果反映了这种差异。事实上,美国遵循惩罚方式的程度远高于其他任何发达社会。美国的人均监禁人数远高于其他任何发达国家,然而,美国的犯罪率却是所有发达国家中最高的。

The difference between these punishment and guidance views of the role of the justice system can be seen in the introduction of this chapter that compared the treatment of two prisoners. Norway follows the “guidance” view and the United States follows the punishment view. The differential results reflect that difference. In fact, the United States has followed the punishment approach to a much greater extent than just about any other developed society. It imprisons many more people per capita than does any other developed country, and yet the United States has the highest crime rates of any developed country.

实证证据不足以指导政策实证证据并不能告诉我们这两种观点哪一种更为恰当。不同解释之间的因果关系和相关性非常复杂,统计分析无法提供明确的答案。但我们必须承认,本文作者坚定地站在“指导性司法观”阵营。原因在于上述三个问题之间的相互作用:如果监狱中的人代表了整个社会,每个人的朋友和孩子都面临着类似的惩罚,那么如果惩罚符合普遍利益并且不会对社会各个亚群体产生不同的影响,那么惩罚观或许是合理的。但美国的情况并非如此。很少有富人和中上阶层的人最终入狱;监狱往往是穷人和黑人,尤其是年轻黑人男性的命运。司法应用的不平等表明,司法系统并未平等地应用于社会。

The Empirical Evidence Is Insufficient to Guide Policy The empirical evidence does not tell us which of these two views is appropriate. The causation and correlation of different explanations is so complex that statistical analysis cannot provide definitive answers. But we must admit that the authors of this text fall strongly in the “guidance view of justice” camp. The reason is the interaction of the three problems just listed: Were the people in prison a representative sample of all society, so that everyone’s friends and children were facing similar punishment, then the punishment view might possibly be justifiable if that punishment serves the general good and does not affect subgroups of society differently. That isn’t the case in the United States. Very few rich and upper-middle-class people end up in prison; prison is disproportionately the fate of the poor and of blacks, especially young black men. That unequal application of justice suggests that the justice system is not equally applied to society.

警察偏见、黑人驾驶和恶性循环在一个人进入刑事司法系统之前很久,就需要同理心和明智的咨询来使处理犯罪的指导观点发挥最佳作用——这需要家人和朋友的指导。这种指导在许多贫困家庭中已经失效。父亲往往缺席,其他家庭成员身兼数职,应对贫困的压力,这意味着教师和其他有权威的成年人,如警察,必须承担起指导的角色。如果更多有权威的人能理解他们所指导的年轻人,他们就能提供更好的咨询。这体现了我们的刑事司法系统的另一个问题——许多警察是白人,即使他们很努力(而且绝大多数警察确实很努力),但由于背景差异,他们并不擅长为黑人男性青少年树立榜样或表达同理心。

Police Bias, Driving While Black, and the Downward Spiral The empathy and judicious counseling necessary for the guidance view of dealing with crime to work best occurs long before a person enters the criminal justice system—it takes place with mentoring by family and friends. That mentoring has broken down in many poor households. Fathers are often not to be seen, and other members of the family are working multiple jobs and coping with the stresses of poverty, which means that teachers and other adults in authority such as police have to assume that mentoring role. If more people in authority can relate to the youth they are mentoring, they can provide much better counseling. This presents another problem of our criminal justice system—many of the policemen are white, and even if they try hard (and the large majority of them do), because of differences in background, they are not especially good at providing role models or empathy for black male teenagers.

警察执法的种族现实过去十年,多起警察杀害年轻黑人男子的事件引发了一系列示威和愤怒。“黑人的命也是命”运动由此展开,并在多个城市引发了骚乱。这场运动的导火索是多起黑人被捕时被杀害的事件。例如,2019年,乔治·弗洛伊德因一名白人警察用膝盖压住其颈部长达九分钟而死亡。

The Racial Reality of Policing In the past decade a number of killings of young black men by police provoked a set of demonstrations and outrage. A “Black Lives Matter” movement started, and rioting occurred in a number of cities. The movement was fueled by a number of incidents in which blacks were killed while being arrested. For example, in 2019, George Floyd died as a white police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes.

纽约市前警探兼作家爱德华·康隆 (Edward Conlon) 在题为“警察执法的种族现实”的文章中很好地概括了对这些事件形成看法所涉及的一些问题。在文中,他描述了纽约市警察局使用的一项训练练习。教官让两名白人警察和两名黑人警察走到教室前面。他让一名黑人警察面墙举起双手,两名白人警察假装用枪指着他。然后,教官会问全班发生了什么事,所有人都一致认为这是一次逮捕。然后,他会让一名白人警察面墙举起双手,两名黑人警察假装用枪指着他。然后,教官会再次问全班发生了什么事。全班通常没有回答,因为他们知道练习的目的——黑人和白人警察都认为这起案件是一起抢劫。

Some of the issues involved in forming an opinion on these events were nicely captured in an essay entitled “The Racial Reality of Policing” by former New York City police detective and author Edward Conlon. In it he describes a training exercise used by the NYC police department. The instructor had two white and two black police officers come up to the front of the class. He had one black officer face the wall with his hands up, and two white police officers pretend to point guns at him. He would than ask the class what was happening, and all would agree that it was an arrest. Then he would have one white officer face the wall with his hands up, and two black police officers pretend to point guns at him. He would then again ask the class what was happening. The class generally didn’t answer because they knew the point of the exercise—what both black and white police thought was happening in this case was a mugging.

康隆继续辩称,这种看法是现实,警方将年轻黑人男性视为潜在危险分子的做法理应得到谅解。事实上,他们中危险分子的比例更高,因此这些看法本身也基于现实。此外,其他黑人和警察也持有这种看法。现实情况是,一个黑人被另一个黑人杀害的可能性远高于被警察杀害的可能性。2011年,近7000名黑人男性被谋杀,其中大多数是被其他黑人男性杀害,另有129人被警察杀害。

Conlon went on to argue that such perceptions are the reality, and that police should be excused for treating young black men as potentially dangerous. The reality is a higher percentage of them are dangerous, so these perceptions are themselves based in reality. Moreover. those perceptions are held by other blacks as well as by police. The reality is that a black man is much more likely to be killed by another black man than he is by the police. In 2011, almost 7,000 black men were murdered, mostly by other black men, and 129 were killed by police.

因此,康隆认为,问题不在于警察,而在于对年轻黑人的指导缺失。黑帮文化的某些方面美化枪支暴力,并宣扬那些违背甚至挑战社会规范的规范。这让生活在暴力事件频发地区的大多数黑人面临一个艰难的选择——他们是否支持警察?他们往往不支持,而如果没有当地居民的支持,警察就无法充分维护一个地区的治安。这个地区变成了黑帮控制的法外之地,警察和守法公民都受到了伤害。

So, according to Conlon, the problem is not so much with the police as it is with the breakdown of mentoring of young black people. Aspects of black gang culture glorify gun violence, and promote norms that defy and challenge society’s norms. This leaves the majority of black people who live in areas in which there is significant violence with a difficult choice—do they support the police or not? All too often they don’t, and without that local support, officers cannot adequately police an area. It becomes a lawless area run by gangs, and both police and law-abiding individuals are hurt.

少数族裔地区对警察的不信任意味着警察与社会中许多群体之间缺乏必要的工作关系。这导致低收入地区许多犯罪的有罪不罚率(即犯罪与受罚的比例)很高。现实情况是,低收入地区很大一部分谋杀案悬而未决,许多被捕者得以逃脱定罪,因为该地区的受害者和目击者不愿出面指证,他们要么害怕报复,要么不信任警察和司法系统。这种体系自我强化,警察被视为社会规范的反对者,而不是支持者。

The distrust with which minority areas treat the police means that the necessary working relationship between the police and many groups in society is not there. That leads to a high rate of impunity—the ratio of committing a crime to being punished for that crime—for many crimes in low-income areas. The reality is that large percentages of murders in low-income areas go unsolved, and many who are arrested manage to avoid conviction because victims and witnesses from the area are unwilling to come forward, either because of fear of retaliation or mistrust of the police and the judicial system. The system becomes self-reinforcing, with police becoming seen as the opponents, instead of the supporters, of society’s norms.

提出这些问题的目的是向你们强调,这个问题没有简单的答案,而且人们往往不愿意退一步,看清问题的两面——不愿意扮演一个客观公正的旁观者,努力设身处地为他人着想。虽然几乎所有人都同意,答案的一部分是拥有更加敏感的警员,其中更大比例的警员来自他们所监管的地理区域和社会群体,但即使警察努力做到这一点,也并非易事。

The point in raising these issues is to emphasize to you that there is no easy answer to this problem, and that all too often people fail to be willing to step back and see both sides of the issue—to play the objective impartial spectator who works hard to put himself or herself in someone else’s shoes. While just about everyone agrees that one part of the answer is to have much more sensitive police, a much larger percentage of whom come from the geographic area and social group that they are policing, it is not something that can be easily achieved even when police are trying hard to do it.

结论

Conclusion

以上只是对偏差行为和犯罪问题的简要介绍,但我们希望已经向您传达了这一主题的重要性以及处理犯罪的不同方式。这个问题并非保守派或自由派的问题,左右两派都支持改变现有体系。2015年就体现了这一点。当时,共和党右翼的主要资助者科赫兄弟和前总统奥巴马都一致认为,刑事司法系统已经崩溃,需要改革。他们开始探索如何共同努力实现变革。他们都认为,高水平的在美国,监禁,尤其是对年轻黑人男性的监禁,是不可接受的。为了强调这一问题,奥巴马总统参观了一所联邦监狱,并赞扬了科赫兄弟为推动联邦量刑法律改革以及罪犯获释后待遇改革所做的努力。

This has only been a brief introduction to issues of deviance and crime, but we hope that we have conveyed to you the importance of the topic and the different ways of dealing with crime. The issue is not a conservative or liberal issue, and people on both the right and the left favor changing the system. This was demonstrated in 2015, when the Koch brothers, leading funders of the right wing of the Republican party, and former President Obama both agreed that the criminal justice system was broken and needed to be changed. They began exploring ways in which they could work together to bring about change. They all believed that the high level of incarceration in the United States, especially of young black males, is unacceptable. To highlight the issue, President Obama visited a federal prison and praised the efforts of the Koch brothers in bringing about change in federal sentencing laws and in how people convicted of a crime are treated once released.

这两个群体之所以能够携手合作,是因为他们秉持着“设身处地为他人着想”的思维方式来思考问题。科赫兄弟对刑事司法的兴趣源于他们认为自己不公平地成为了刑事指控的目标。这些指控最终因不恰当而被撤销,但他们成为目标的事实让他们意识到,其他无法聘请高薪律师的人也成为了目标,于是他们决定努力阻止这种情况的发生。

What makes it possible for both of these groups to work together is that they are following the “walk in the other person’s shoes” approach to thinking about problems. The Koch brothers’ interest in criminal justice came about when they became, they believed unfairly, the target of criminal charges. Those charges were dropped as inappropriate, but the fact that they could be targeted made them aware that others, who did not have access to expensive lawyers, were also being targeted, and they decided to try to stop that.

同样,奥巴马总统也能体会到这些罪犯的感受。他说:“这些年轻人犯下的错误,和我以及你们很多人犯下的错误并无太大区别。我之所以感到震惊,是因为我深知,若非上帝的恩典,我便无能为力。”

Similarly, President Obama could relate to the felons. He stated: “These are young people who made mistakes that aren’t that different from the mistakes I made and the mistakes that a lot of you guys made. That’s what strikes me—there but for the grace of God.”

社会科学家对于如何纠正美国的刑事司法问题还没有答案,但我们有最有可能找到答案的方法:用“站在别人的立场上”思考问题,真诚地寻求各方都能接受的改革。

Social scientists don’t have the answer to how to correct the criminal justice problem in the United States, but we do have the approach that is most likely to lead to an answer: Apply the “walk in the other person’s shoes” approach to thinking about the problem and honestly search for reforms that can be accepted by all sides.

学习回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 规范是相对的,在社会的不同群体之间有所不同,并且包括鼓励一定程度的越轨行为的规范。
  • Norms are relative, differ among subgroups of society, and include a norm that encourages a certain degree of deviance.
  • 除非法律禁止越轨行为,否则越轨行为并不构成犯罪。
  • Deviant behavior is not a crime unless there is a law against that behavior.
  • 法治的目的是限制政府处理越轨行为的方式。
  • The rule of law is meant to place restrictions to how governments deal with deviant behavior.
  • 犯罪的五种社会学解释是差异交往理论、控制理论、标签理论、压力理论和非法机会理论。
  • Five sociological explanations of crime are differential association theory, control theory, labeling theory, strain theory, and illegitimate opportunity theory.
  • 对偏差的经济解释强调个人的成本和收益。
  • The economic explanations of deviance emphasize costs and benefits to an individual.
  • 犯罪可分为重罪、轻罪和违法行为,其中重罪最为严重。
  • Crimes can be classified as felonies, misdemeanors, and infractions, with felonies being the most serious.
  • 美国司法制度表现不佳的原因有三个:试图做太多事情、执行不公平、以及对目的是惩罚还是指导不明确。
  • Three reasons for poor showings of the US justice system include its attempt to do too much, unequal implementation, and lack of clarity over whether the purpose is punishment or guidance.
  • 对于许多穷人和黑人来说,司法系统似乎更像是一个敲诈勒索系统,而不是一个司法系统。
  • To many poor people and black people, the justice system seems to be more of a shakedown system than a justice system.
  • 为了确保警务工作有效,警察必须与民众合作,而不是对抗民众。
  • For policing to be effective, the police must work with the population, not against it.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 控制理论 (137)
  • control theory (137)
  • 犯罪 (139)
  • crime (139)
  • 偏差(129)
  • deviance (129)
  • 差异交往理论(136)
  • differential association theory (136)
  • 重罪(140)
  • felonies (140)
  • 功能主义视角(136)
  • functionalist perspective (136)
  • 不正当机会结构(138)
  • illegitimate opportunity structures (138)
  • 违规行为(140)
  • infractions (140)
  • 标签理论(136)
  • labeling theory (136)
  • 轻罪(140)
  • misdemeanors (140)
  • 习俗 (130)
  • mores (130)
  • 规范(129)
  • norms (129)
  • 人格障碍(135)
  • personality disorder (135)
  • 禁令(139)
  • Prohibition (139)
  • 有罪不罚率 (146)
  • rate of impunity (146)
  • 法治(132)
  • rule of law (132)
  • 应变理论 (138)
  • strain theory (138)
  • 符号互动论视角(136)
  • symbolic interactionist perspective (136)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 什么是规范?它与习俗有何不同?
  2. What are norms and how do they differ from mores?
  3. 为什么社会学家强调,导致行为越轨的是社会对行为的反应,而不是行为本身?
  4. Why do sociologists emphasize that it is society’s reaction to an act, not the act itself, that makes an action deviant?
  5. 为什么某种行为在一个社会里可能是犯罪,而在另一个社会里却不是?
  6. Why may an act be a crime in one society but not in another?
  7. 解释犯罪行为如何成为符合群体规范的行为。
  8. Explain how criminal behavior could be behavior conforming to a group norm.
  9. 民法和普通法传统有何区别?
  10. What is the difference between a civil law and a common law tradition?
  11. 什么是法治?为什么法治如此重要?
  12. What is the rule of law and why is it important?
  13. 社会科学是否会告诉你打孩子屁股来惩罚他/她是否错误?
  14. Does social science tell you whether spanking a child to punish him or her is wrong?
  15. 普通法或民法传统是否更加重视过去的判决?
  16. Does the common law or civil law tradition give more emphasis to past judgments?
  17. 根据压力理论,犯罪对于成功的工业社会来说是必要的吗?
  18. According to the strain theory, is crime necessary for a successful industrial society?
  19. 标签理论与犯罪行为的非法机会理论有何相似之处?
  20. In what way is the labeling theory similar to the illegitimate opportunity theory of criminal behavior?
  21. 列出美国司法系统中三个相互关联的问题。
  22. List three interrelated problems with the US system of justice.
  23. 如何区分重罪和轻罪?
  24. How would you distinguish a felony from a misdemeanor?
  25. 对于司法系统的目的,有哪两种不同观点?
  26. What are two different views of the purpose of the justice system?
  27. 警务的破窗理论是什么意思?
  28. What is meant by the Broken Windows theory of policing?
  29. 一名年轻的黑人男子被白人警察还是黑人警察杀害的可能性更大?这对警察政策有何影响?
  30. Is a young black man more likely to be killed by a white policeman or another black man? What implications does that have for police policy?
  31. 低收入黑人社区犯罪不受惩罚率高的原因是什么?
  32. What are the causes of the high rates of impunity for crime in low-income black communities?
  33. 从他们所管辖的地理区域派遣更多的警察如何有助于实现更加公平的司法制度?
  34. How would having more police coming from the geographic areas they are policing help in achieving a fairer system of justice?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 请访问网站www.thoughtco.com/folkways-mores-taboos-and-laws-3026267。规范和习俗之间有什么区别?
  2. Visit the site www.thoughtco.com/folkways-mores-taboos-and-laws-3026267. What is the difference between norms and mores?
  3. Ice T 的“Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It”视频(www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzeZhCt5PVA)是否有任何社会意义?如果有,那么它的意义是什么?
  4. Does Ice T’s “Gangsta Rap Made Me Do It” video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzeZhCt5PVA) serve a useful social purpose? If so, what is that purpose?
  5. 一级重罪的例子是什么(http://www.courtregistry.org/criminal_court_records/felonies/felony_class/)?
  6. What is an example of a Class I felony (http://www.courtregistry.org/criminal_court_records/felonies/felony_class/)?
  7. 国家药物管制政策办公室 ( https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ondcp/alternatives-to-incarceration ) 建议的监禁替代方案是什么?
  8. What is an alternative to imprisonment suggested by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/ondcp/alternatives-to-incarceration)?
  9. 在 YouTube 上观看乔恩·斯图尔特对爱德华·康隆的采访(www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3bR_tCbngzc)。康隆是在什么年龄说警察在少数族裔地区不再酷了?
  10. Go the Jon Stewart’s interview of Edward Conlon on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3bR_tCbngzc). At what age does Conlon say that cops stop being cool in minority areas?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 亚历山大,米歇尔,《新吉姆克劳法:色盲时代的大规模监禁》,纽约:新出版社,2010 年。
  • Alexander, Michelle, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, New York: The New Press, 2010.
  • 巴特勒,保罗,《锁喉:黑人警察》,纽约:新出版社,2017 年。
  • Butler, Paul, Chokehold: Policing Black Men, New York: The New Press, 2017.
  • Clear,Todd 和 Natasha Frost,《惩罚的必要性:美国大规模监禁的兴起与失败》,纽约:纽约大学出版社,2013 年。
  • Clear, Todd, and Natasha Frost, The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America, New York: New York University Press, 2013.
  • 康隆,爱德华,《蓝血》,纽约:企鹅出版社,2004 年。
  • Conlon, Edward, Blue Blood, New York: Penguin Publishers, 2004.
  • Dobbert, Duane L. 和 Thomas X. Mackey,《偏差;违反社会规范的行为理论》,纽约:Praeger,2015 年。
  • Dobbert, Duane L., and Thomas X. Mackey, Deviance; Theories o Behaviors that Defy Social Norms, New York: Praeger, 2015.
  • Downes, David 和 Paul Rock 《理解偏差:犯罪与违规社会学指南》,牛津:牛津大学出版社,2011 年。
  • Downes, David, and Paul Rock, Understanding Deviance: A Guide to the Sociology of Crime and Rule Breaking, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  • 德鲁克,欧内斯特,《监狱的瘟疫:美国大规模监禁的流行病学》,纽约:新出版社,2013 年。
  • Drucker, Ernest, A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America, New York: The New Press, 2013.
  • 福尔曼,詹姆斯,《锁定我们自己:美国黑人的罪与罚》,纽约:法勒、斯特劳斯和吉鲁出版社,2017 年。
  • Forman, James, Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017.
  • 迈克尔·福特纳,《黑人沉默的大多数:洛克菲勒毒品法和惩罚政治》,马萨诸塞州剑桥:哈佛大学出版社,2015 年。
  • Fortner, Michael, Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.
  • 海莉,莎拉,《这里没有怜悯:性别、惩罚和吉姆克劳现代性的形成》北卡罗来纳州教堂山:北卡罗来纳大学出版社,2016 年。
  • Haley, Sarah, No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity, Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2016.
  • Looman,Mary 和 John Carl,《监狱之郡:大规模监禁和新国家的建立》,牛津:牛津大学出版社,2015 年。
  • Looman, Mary, and John Carl, A County Called Prison: Mass Incarceration and the Making of a New Nation, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
  • 佩格斯,杰夫,《黑与蓝:警察与黑人美国的分歧》,纽约:普罗米修斯图书,2017 年。
  • Pegues, Jeff, Black and Blue: Inside the Divide between the Police and Black America, New York: Prometheus Books, 2017.
  • 普兰丁加,亚当,《警察知道的 400 件事:资深巡警的街头智慧课程》,加利福尼亚州弗雷斯诺:Quill Driver Books,2014 年。
  • Plantinga, Adam, 400 Things Cops Know: Street-Smart Lessons for a Veteran Patrolman, Fresno, CA: Quill Driver Books, 2014.
  • 里奥斯,维克多,《惩罚:黑人和拉丁裔男孩的生活监管》,纽约:纽约大学出版社,2011 年。
  • Rios, Victor, Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys, New York: New York University Press, 2011.
  • 申瓦尔 (Schenwar),玛雅 (Maya),《封锁,封锁:监狱为何不起作用以及我们如何做得更好》加利福尼亚州奥克兰:贝雷特-科勒出版社,2014 年。
  • Schenwar, Maya, Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prisons Don’t Work and How We Can Do Better, Oakland, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2014.
  • 斯宾塞,格里,《警察国家:美国警察如何逍遥法外》,纽约:圣马丁出版社,2015 年。
  • Spence, Gerry, Police State: How America’s Cops Get Away with Murder, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2015.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第三部分 制度与社会

Part III Institutions and Society

第九家庭

chapter 9The Family

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-9

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-9

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 列出家庭模式的四种变化,并讨论在哪里可以找到这些变化
  • List four variations in family patterns and discuss where such variations can be found
  • 列出家庭的三个功能,并解释家庭模式的变化如何发挥这些功能
  • List three functions of the family and explain how variations in family patterns serve those functions
  • 讨论当今美国家庭的状况和问题
  • Discuss the state and problems of the US family today
  • 讨论技术对家庭的影响以及未来技术变化可能对家庭产生什么影响
  • Discuss the effects of technology on the family and what effect future changes in technology are likely to have on the family

在所有塑造我们个性并帮助我们适应不断变化的环境的机构中,家庭——一群通过婚姻、血缘或其他纽带紧密联系在一起、作为一个整体与外界打交道的人——是最重要的。我们最初的社会化是在家庭内部进行的。如果我们的家庭单位运转不畅,我们很可能会出现个人和社会问题。在美国,家庭得到民事和宗教当局的认可。家庭通常由婚姻组成——婚姻是一种社会制度,标志着个人之间承诺以家庭为单位生活,并得到民事和/或宗教当局的认可。

Of all the institutions that shape our personalities and help us adjust to changing environments, the family—a group of persons closely related by marriage, blood, or some other bond who deal as a unit with the outside world—is the most important. It is within the family that we are initially socialized. If our family unit is not working, we are likely to have personal and social problems. In the United States, families are recognized by civil and religious authorities. Families typically are formed by marriage—a social institution marking a commitment between individuals to live as a family which is recognized by civil and/or religious authorities.

家庭模式的变化

Variations in the Family Pattern

婚姻和家庭的构成形式多种多样。直到最近,大多数美国人都倾向于将家庭定义为由母亲、父亲和一个或多个受抚养子女组成的家庭,通常父亲工作,母亲在家。这种家庭如今在美国已是少数;事实上,只有不到10%的家庭符合这种描述。如今,美国家庭的构成更加多元化。单亲家庭、无子女家庭和单人家庭更为常见,也更容易被接受。同样,我们对婚姻和家庭的许多其他观念也并非普遍认同。例如,婚姻过去被认为是一男一女之间的结合。随着美国同性婚姻合法化,情况已不再如此。

Many variations of marriage and families are possible. Until recently most people in the United States tended to think of the family in terms of a mother, father, and one or more dependent children, often with the father working and the mother staying at home. That kind of family is now in the minority in the United States; in fact, fewer than 10 percent of our households meet this description. Today US households are much more diverse. Single-parent families, families with no children, and single-person families are much more common and accepted. Similarly, many of our other ideas about marriage and the family are not universally held. For example, marriage used to be thought of as a union between a man and a woman. That is no longer the case with the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States.

在思考婚姻观念的变化时,有必要回顾婚姻作为家庭制度基础的历史。回顾这段历史,我们会发现婚姻既包含宗教成分,也包含世俗成分。民事婚姻的历史可以追溯到更久远的时期;从很早以前开始,政府就婚姻的构成(例如,是否允许一夫多妻制)以及个人在婚姻中享有的权利制定了不断变化的规则。这些规则逐渐融入社会的法律体系(例如,直到最近,女性在西方社会,如果女人结婚后必须将所有财产转移给丈夫(在西方社会,她们必须将所有财产转移给丈夫),这些法律规范构成了婚姻的民事或世俗基础。不同宗教对婚姻的宗教历史有不同的看法。在西方,婚姻的历史可以追溯到中世纪,当时天主教会认可婚姻是男人、女人和上帝之间的圣礼。其他宗教则持有不同观点,有些宗教认为婚姻仅仅是政府事务。婚姻的民事和宗教双重性使有关婚姻的争论复杂化,导致个人在宗教眼中已婚,但在法律眼中却不结婚,反之亦然。美国的一夫多妻制就是一些宗教接受但不为美国法律接受的婚姻的例子。同性婚姻是美国法律接受的婚姻的例子,但不为一些宗教团体接受。

In thinking about the changing views of marriage, it is useful to consider the history of marriage as an institution underlying the family Looking at that history, we see that marriage has both a religious and a secular component. Marriages civil history goes back further; and, from early on, governments have adopted changing rules about what constitutes marriage (for example, whether polygamy is allowed) and the rights that individuals have in marriage. These rules become built into society’s legal code (for example, until recently, when women married in Western society, they had to transfer all their property to their husband), and those legal codes form the civil or secular foundation of marriage. Marriage’s religious history differs among different religions. In the West, the history of marriage goes back to the Middle Ages, when the Catholic Church sanctioned marriage as a sacrament between a man, a woman, and God. Other religions took different views, and some religions saw marriage as simply a government issue. The dual civil-religious aspect of marriage complicates debates about marriage and leads to the possibility of individuals being married in the eyes of a religion, but not in the eyes of the law, and vice versa. Polygamy in the United States is an example of marriage accepted by some religions but not by US laws. Same-sex marriage is an example of marriage accepted by US law, but not by some religious groups.

婚姻观念的转变导致了家庭性质的变化。家庭是由传统、国家还是宗教组织定义的?事实上,它是由这三者共同定义的,这意味着正式的婚姻状况在家庭分类中变得不那么重要了。人们对婚姻与家庭之间的脱节持更加开放的态度。即使在二十年前,家庭也会对孩子与伴侣同居但未婚,或者女儿生孩子但未婚的情况保持沉默;而如今,婚姻已被更广泛地接受,并作为一种可接受的社会选择被公开讨论。然而,婚姻和可允许的家庭结构仍然存在法律和社会限制,下一节我们将介绍一些选择。

The change in views of marriage has led to changes in the nature of the family. Is family defined by tradition, by the state, or by religious organizations. The reality is that it is defined by all three, which means that formal marriage status has become less important in classifying families. There is much more openness about the disconnect between marriage and family. Whereas, even twenty years ago, families would keep quiet about their children who were living with a partner, but not married, or of a daughter having a child but not being married, today, it is much more accepted, and discussed openly as an acceptable social option. Still, there are both legal and social limitations on marriage and allowable family structures, and in the next section we describe some of the options.

配偶数量

Number of Mates

在西方世界,一夫一妻制是传统的婚姻关系形式,在大多数地方也是唯一合法的婚姻关系形式。一夫一妻制是指只有一夫一妻的婚姻形式。即使在其他婚姻形式被允许或鼓励的地方,这也是迄今为止世界各地最普遍的婚姻形式。鉴于美国离婚率的上升,一些研究人员建议我们应该制定一个新的名称——“连续一夫一妻制”——来描述我们标准的正式婚姻关系,即一夫一妻的婚姻,随后婚姻关系解除,同一位丈夫或妻子与另一位伴侣再次结婚。

In the Western world, monogamy is the traditional and, in most places, the only legal form of matrimonial relationship. Monogamy is a form of marriage in which there is one husband and one wife. This is by far the most widespread form of marriage all over the world, even where other forms are allowed or encouraged. Given the increasing frequency of divorce in the United States, some researchers have suggested that we should develop a new name—serial monogamy—to describe our standard formal relationship, which is marriage between one husband and one wife followed by a dissolution of that marriage and a subsequent marriage between that same husband or wife and another partner.

一夫多妻制(Polygamy)是指一夫多妻制,但它又分为两种类型:一夫多妻制(polygyny),即一个丈夫和两个或多个妻子;一妻多夫制(polyandry),即一个妻子和两个或多个丈夫。一夫多妻制家庭可以被认为是两个或多个核心家庭结合在一起,因为所有孩子都有一个共同的父母。一些作家也承认一种称为群婚或集体婚姻(cenogamy)的多元婚姻形式。集体婚姻是一种结合形式,即几个男人与几个女人结婚,但这种关系并不常见。同性婚姻是指同性别成年人之间的结合。

Polygamy is the term used for plural marriage, but this is divided into two types: polygyny, meaning one husband and two or more wives, and polyandry, meaning one wife and two or more husbands. A polygamous family may be thought of as two or more nuclear families bound together because all the children have one parent in common. Some writers also recognize a form of plural marriage called group marriage, or cenogamy. Cenogamy is a form of union in which several men are married to several women, but such relationships are uncommon. Same-sex marriage is a union between adults of the same gender.

在一夫多妻制被认可的地方,实行一夫多妻制通常是为了提升声望和经济利益。例如,在南美洲的图皮人以及非洲部分地区,财富和显赫程度的衡量标准是一个男人拥有多少个妻子。妻子通常不仅要承担家务,还要下地干活,从而为整个家族的生计做出贡献。有时,例如在密克罗尼西亚的特罗布里恩群岛,

Where polygyny is sanctioned, it is generally practiced both for its prestige value and for its economic advantages. Among the Tupis of South America, for instance, as well as in sections of Africa, wealth and distinction are measured in terms of how many wives a man has. Often the wives not only perform domestic services but also work in the fields, and thus contribute to the support of the entire family group. Sometimes, as in the Trobriand Islands of Micronesia,

印度父母经常为子女包办婚姻。 © GAUTEM DEY/AFP via Getty Images

Indian parents often arrange marriages for their children. © GAUTEM DEY/AFP via Getty Images

酋长的收入取决于其妻子们家庭每年收到的馈赠。第一任妻子通常负责管理家务,但她不一定是最受宠爱的妻子。很多情况下,每个妻子各自掌管一个家务,丈夫则轮流照顾她们。

the income of a chief depends on the annual endowments received from the families of his wives. The first wife usually has the responsibility of administering the affairs of the household, but she is not necessarily the favorite wife. In many cases, each wife keeps a separate household, and the husband rotates his attention among them.

一妻多夫制相对罕见。它主要存在于西藏部分地区和印度一些原住民部落中,在这些部落中,一个女人可以嫁给两个或两个以上的兄弟。加拿大、马克萨斯群岛和非洲巴希马的少数原住民中也存在一妻多夫制,但它是主要婚姻形式中最不常见的。

Polyandry is comparatively rare. It is found mainly in some parts of Tibet and among some aboriginal tribes of India, where a woman may marry two or more brothers. There are also cases of polyandry among a certain few indigenous people of Canada, in the Marquesas Islands, and among the Bahima in Africa, but it is the least common of the main forms of marriage.

配偶的选择

Selection of Mates

择偶规则的多样性,与其所发展的社会一样。这些规则不仅在不同社会之间有所不同,而且在一个社会中,不同阶层(例如社会阶层)之间也存在差异。这些规则通常对有资格与特定个人结婚的人进行各种限制。

The rules governing the choice of mates are as diverse as the societies in which they have developed. The rules differ not only from one society to another but also among subgroups, such as social classes, within a society. They usually include various limitations on the persons who are eligible to marry any given individual.

让我们首先考虑一些关于资格的规则。例如,在印度,某一种姓的人很难与另一个种姓的人结婚;而直到最近,在南非这样的国家,一个种族的人还不允许与另一个种族的人结婚。在某些社会中,无论血亲关系多么疏远,都不能与其通婚;而在其他社会中,人们只能与亲属群体内部的人结婚。1一方面,主导因素是对乱伦(即近亲之间发生性行为)的恐惧,以及对联盟的渴望。另一方面,则是害怕与与自己所属社会群体差异过大的人结婚(在某些小群体中,这必然意味着与亲戚结婚)。在大多数现代社会中,这两种力量同时发挥作用,因此大多数人发现,他们在寻找合适的结婚对象时,仅限于没有密切亲属关系但属于同一社会群体的人。

Let us first consider some of the rules governing eligibility. For instance, in India a person of one caste finds it difficult to marry an individual from another, and, until recently, in a country such as South Africa a person of one race was not permitted to marry someone from another race. In some societies, one may never marry a blood relative, no matter how distant, and in others one may marry only within the kinship group.1 The governing factors on the one hand are the fear of incest, or sexual activity among people who are close kin, and the desire for alliances. At the other extreme is the fear of marrying anyone too unlike the social group to which one belongs (in the case of certain small groups, this necessarily means marrying a relative). In the majority of modern societies, both forces operate, and therefore most people find their search for acceptable marriage mates limited to persons not closely related but within the same general social group.

婚姻伴侣的实际选择受到规则的约束。有些社会存在包办婚姻——由婚姻伴侣以外的一人或多人安排的婚姻——因为人们认为婚姻既关乎家庭,也关乎个人。支持这种婚姻的理由包括财富、财产或政治权力的结合,或者认为年轻人过于不成熟、缺乏经验、容易冲动,无法充分考虑维持长久成功婚姻所需的所有因素。

Rules govern the actual choice of a marriage partner. Some societies have arranged marriages—marriages that are arranged by one or more persons other than the marriage partners—because it is believed that a marriage is as much the concern of the families as of the individuals involved. The arguments in favor of such marriages include alliances of wealth, property, or political power, or the belief that young people are too immature, inexperienced, and impulsive to consider properly all the factors necessary for an enduring and successful marriage.

许多在美国生活的亚裔家庭仍然会为子女包办婚姻,其中许多子女受过高等教育。在某些社会中,妻子是通过绑架或俘虏获得的,例如在袭击邻近部落时。有时绑架是真的,有时只是为了履行先前约定而举行的仪式。

Many Asian families in the United States still arrange marriages for their children, many of whom are highly educated. In some societies, wives are obtained by kidnapping or by capture, perhaps in a raid on a neighboring tribe. Sometimes the kidnapping is genuine, and sometimes it is a ritual that carries out a previous understanding.

另一种主要的选择类型,我们称之为个人选择婚配。个人选择婚配意味着个人在婚配方面享有自由,相对较少受到他人干涉。这是我们在主流社会中熟悉的婚姻类型。然而,这种选择自由并不局限于我们自己的国家,也不局限于我们这个时代,尽管我们再次强调,婚配活动几乎总是在当地现行法律和习俗的框架内进行的。

The other principal type of selection we call personal-choice mating. Personal-choice mating implies the custom of personal freedom in mating, with relatively little interference from others. This is the type of marriage we are familiar with in mainstream society. However, this freedom of choice is not restricted to our own country, nor indeed to our own time, although we again emphasize that mating activities are almost always carried on within the framework of the prevailing local laws and mores.

个人择偶的技巧因社会而异,道德和法律约束也各不相同。例如,早期的极地爱斯基摩人不仅在缔结永久婚姻方面拥有完全的选择自由,而且婚前还有一段被认可的群居时期,在此期间,社区中的年轻人会进行实验性的交配。这种安排所生的孩子不被视为私生子,而是属于母亲和最终成为她丈夫的男人。男人选择妻子的标准之一是她所展现的生育能力,正如女人选择丈夫的标准之一是他所展现的养育她和她孩子的能力一样。

The techniques involved in personal-choice mating differ from one society to another, as do the moral and legal sanctions governing them. For example, among the polar Eskimos in earlier days, there was not only complete freedom of choice by mutual agreement in the making of a permanent marriage, but before marriage there was also a sanctioned period of group living, during which experimental mating took place among the youth of the community. Children resulting from this arrangement were not considered illegitimate but belonged to the mother and the man who eventually became her husband. One of the criteria often used by the man in choosing a wife was her demonstrated ability to bear children, just as one of the criteria for the woman in choosing her husband was his demonstrated ability to provide for her and her children.

家庭控制

Family Control

从来没有一种家庭控制模式是放之四海而皆准的,但主要有三种模式:父权制、母权制和平等主义家庭。父权制是一种以父亲为最高权威的社会组织形式。母权制是一种以母亲为最高权威的社会组织形式。平等主义家庭是一种共同控制的家庭,父亲和母亲都不是至高无上的。

No one type of family control has ever been universal, but three main patterns have prevailed: patriarchy, matriarchy, and the egalitarian family. A patriarchy is a form of social organization in which the father is the supreme authority. A matriarchy is a form of social organization in which the mother is the supreme authority. An egalitarian family is one with shared control, with neither the father nor the mother as superior.

在父权文化中,父亲不仅是一家之主,社会也认为孩子属于他,他拥有掌控孩子命运的权威,甚至在某些情况下,有权将孩子嫁娶或买卖。父权家庭制度在地中海沿岸的早期文明中很常见,并通过基督教文明延续至今。我们的殖民者维护了父权制度,如今在美国以及世界其他地区,仍然有许多家庭,尽管略有不同,但父亲仍然是家庭中公认的权威。

In a patriarchal culture, not only is the father the head of the family, but society also considers that the children belong to him and that he has authority over their lives, even, in some cases, the right to give or sell them in marriage. The patriarchal family was found among the early civilizations around the Mediterranean and has been carried down through Christian civilizations to modern times. Our colonial fathers maintained the patriarchal system, and there are still many families in the United States, as well as in other parts of the world, in which the father is the recognized authority in the family, although with some modifications.

家庭控制权实际上掌握在母亲手中的社会实属罕见。在大多数所谓的母系文化中,例如美国西南部的祖尼印第安人,母亲通常并不像人们想象的那样拥有直接的控制权。更常见的情况是,母亲的兄弟掌握着权力,控制着孩子。但家庭会使用母亲的姓氏,通常与母亲的父母或其他亲戚住在一起。丈夫可能会搬去和他们一起住,但他往往会花更多时间与自己的母亲或姐妹的家人在一起,帮助控制她们的孩子。由于他对自己的孩子没有控制权,所以他更像是他们的玩伴和朋友。

Societies in which family control actually rests with the mother are exceptional. In most so-called matriarchal cultures, as among the Zuni Indians in the southwestern part of the United States, the mother usually does not have direct control, as one might suppose. More often, the mothers brother wields authority and controls the children. But the family takes the mother’s name and usually lives with the mother’s parents or other relatives. The husband may move in with them, but he is apt to spend more time with his own mother or his sisters’ families, helping to control their children. Because he has no control status with his own children, he is more of a playmate and friend to them.

美国家庭的控制权逐渐转向伴侣制,或称平等制。随着女性日益获得平等甚至更高的教育,以及更加平等的经济和政治权利与特权,家庭的控制权越来越多地由婚姻伴侣双方共同承担,或主要由女性掌控。

Family control in the United States has gradually shifted toward the partnership, or egalitarian, form. As women have increasingly gained equal or greater education and more equal economic and political rights and privileges, the control of the family has more and more come to be shared by both marriage partners or primarily controlled by the woman.

单亲家庭

Single-Parent Families

前面关于家庭控制的讨论是关于家中有两个父母的家庭。这种传统家庭已不再是常态,尤其是在低收入阶层。在那里,传统家庭已被单亲家庭所取代,母亲是家庭的支柱,父亲很少在身边。目前,大约67%的黑人家庭、42%的西班牙裔家庭和25%的白人家庭是单亲家庭。通常,单亲父母是母亲;她既工作又照顾孩子。有时父亲或男朋友会和她住在一起,但他们通常不被视为家庭不可或缺的一部分。男性被视为生育孩子的必需品,但在其他方面则无关紧要。事实上,许多女性表示,父亲或男朋友更像是另一个孩子。

The preceding discussion about family control was about families in which there are two parents at home. That traditional family is no longer the norm, especially at the lower end of the income spectrum. There the traditional family has been replaced by single-parent households in which the mother is the family and the father is seldom around. Currently about 67 percent of black households, 42 percent of Hispanic, and 25 percent of white families are single-parent families. Generally, the single parent is the mother; she both works and cares for the children. Sometimes the father or a boyfriend live with her, but they are often not seen as an integral part of the family. Men are seen as needed to conceive children, but otherwise are tangential. In fact, many women report that the father or boyfriend is more like another child.

传统家庭破裂的原因有很多;部分原因是缺乏受教育程度较低的男性所从事的传统体力劳动;部分原因是文化差异;部分原因是政府政策,例如我们处理犯罪的方式。无论原因如何,这都给母亲带来了巨大的压力,她们既是主要的照顾者,又是养家糊口的人。这些单亲女性会得到一些来自大家庭和朋友的帮助,但她们的工作量仍然很大。有时,除了养家糊口和照顾孩子之外,她们还要上大学来提高收入能力,这相当于她们做了三份全职工作。

There are many reasons for the breakdown of the traditional family; part of it has to do with the lack of the traditional manual jobs that less educated men took; part has to do with culture, and part has to do with government policy such as our way of dealing with crime. Whatever the reason, it places enormous pressure on the mother, who finds herself as both primary caregiver and breadwinner. These single-parent women get some help from their extended families and friends, but the amount of work they do is substantial. Sometimes, in addition to being the breadwinner and caretaker, they attend college to improve their earning capacity, giving them the equivalent of three full-time jobs.

血统计算

Reckoning of Descent

在西方世界,我们使用双边计算血统的方法,将祖先同时计入父亲和母亲双方,因为我们的生物遗传来自双方。然而,这并非普遍做法。有些社会使用单边计算法,即一个人被视为属于父亲或母亲家族,祖先仅按男性血统或女性血统计算。父系通过男性血统确定血统;母系制通过女性血统确定血统。不使用双边计算法在我们看来可能不合逻辑,但对于使用这种方法的人来说,它确实简化了事情。想象一下,有人要求你说出你二十年前的祖先的名字几代人。非洲酋长如果根据父系血统推算自己的祖先,就会知道所需的二十个名字。在我们的社会中,我们必须记住1,048,576个名字。很少有人能追溯到这么久远的家谱,但许多家庭保留着类似图9.1所示的家谱。

In the Western world, we use the bilateral method of reckoning descent, counting our ancestors on both our fathers and our mother’s side because our biological inheritance comes from both. However, this is not the universal practice. Some societies use the unilateral method, in which an individual is deemed to belong to either the fathers or the mothers family, and ancestors are reckoned only in the male line of descent or in the female line. A patrilinear system determines descent through the male line; a matrilinear system determines descent through the female line. Not using a bilateral method may not seem logical to us, but it does simplify matters for those who use it. Imagine being asked to name your ancestors going back twenty generations. The African chief who reckons his ancestry by patrilinear descent would know the twenty names required. In our society, we would have to remember 1,048,576 names. Few carry their family tree back that far, but many families keep a family tree like the one in Figure 9.1.

图9.1如何绘制家谱。

Figure 9.1How to draw a family tree.

西方社会普遍奉行父权制,采用双边计算血统的方法。除了男性心理调节的需要外,这些习俗似乎并未充分履行家庭的任何功能。社会确实需要履行养育子女的职能,女性的确生育并哺育子女,而且她们在基因和社会层面都得到了进化,因此,平均而言,女性比男性更有能力照顾孩子,至少在孩子三岁左右之前是如此。母性本能确实存在。但这种父权制现实仅仅意味着男性很可能会继续不间断地赚取收入,而并不意味着男性将掌控家庭。

Western societies generally are patriarchal and use a bilateral method of reckoning descent. These customs do not seem to fulfill significantly any of the functions of the family other than the need for the psychological adjustment of the male. Society does need to fulfill the childrearing function, and it is true that women bear and nurse children and have evolved both genetically and socially so that, on average, a woman is better able to deal with children than a man is, at least until the child reaches the age of about three. Maternal instincts exist. But this patriarchal reality only suggests that the male will most likely maintain the uninterrupted income-earning activities, not that the male will have control of the family.

在很大程度上,维持父权制的因素是社会和基因的惰性。男性主导地位根植于社会和基因结构之中。这种根深蒂固的根基并不意味着它无法改变,也并不意味着它不会被改变。它只是意味着,只有通过自觉的努力和对平等的道德承诺,才能改变它。

What maintains the patriarchal system is, in large part, social and genetic inertia. Male dominance is built into the social and genetic structure of society. The fact that it is built in does not mean that it cannot, or will not, be changed. It simply means that it will only be changed through conscious effort and moral commitment to equality.

姓名和命名系统是重要的象征。在美国,虽然我们通常承认双方血统,但我们通常使用父亲或丈夫的名字,以强调父系血统;然而,近年来,越来越多的已婚女性保留了自己的出生姓氏。

Names and naming systems are important symbols. In the United States, although we generally acknowledge our descent bilaterally, the name we carry usually is that of our father or husband, emphasizing the patrilinear line of ancestry; however, in recent times, more married women have been keeping their birth names.

家庭在社会中的作用

Functions of the Family in Society

尽管家庭结构千差万别,但几个世纪以来,家庭制度经历了种种变迁,却依然屹立不倒,这背后有着重要的深层原因。这些原因体现在家庭的功能上。家庭具有多种功能:

Despite such diversity of family structure, there are important underlying reasons for the survival of this institution through all the changes that have taken place over centuries. These reasons can be found in the functions of the family The family has many functions:

  • 它必须繁衍该物种,否则该物种就会灭绝。
  • It must reproduce the species, otherwise the species will end.
  • 它必须确保年轻人能够合理地适应,这样他们就不会给社会带来麻烦,并且确保他们长大后在生物学和生理上具有生产力。
  • It must see to it that the young are reasonably well adjusted, so that they don’t cause trouble for society and that they grow up to be productive in the biological and physical sense.
  • 它必须为父母提供足够的满足感,让他们的孩子保持良好的适应,不会给社会带来麻烦。
  • It must provide sufficient satisfaction for parents to keep their children well-adjusted so they don’t make trouble for society.

社会依靠家庭来履行这些职能,当家庭不能成功时,其他社会机构必须进行调整。

Society relies on families to fulfill these functions, and when they do not succeed, other social institutions must adapt.

让我们举一个例子:家庭的生物学功能,或者说繁衍后代的需要。直到最近,很少有已婚夫妇自愿不生育子女,但在过去二十年里,没有孩子的家庭数量一直在增加。在此期间,许多已婚和未婚女性都推迟生育,并继续深造,在事业上站稳脚跟。她们通常会嫁给其他专业人士。这些职业夫妇的收入往往很高,但他们的开支和抱负也很高。他们选择推迟生育,这其中的原因包括避孕技术的进步以及对这些技术的日益认可。

Lets consider an example: the biological function of families, or the need to reproduce. Until recently, few married couples were voluntarily childless, but in the last twenty years the number of families having no children has been increasing. During this time, many women, both married and unmarried, delayed childbearing and pursued professional education, gaining a foothold in their careers. Often they married other professionals. The incomes of these professional couples tended to be high, but so were their expenses and their ambitions. They chose to put off having children, which they were able to do because of, among other reasons, advances in contraceptive techniques and increasing sanction of these techniques.

许多推迟生育的夫妇正在经历所谓的“三十七岁综合症”,即接近生育年龄末期的夫妇选择在女性达到不明智或不可能怀孕的年龄之前至少生育一个孩子。这种相反的趋势在20世纪80年代开始显现,并持续到21世纪初。大约在同一时期,一种现象浮现出来:未婚女性不仅欢迎怀孕,而且积极寻求怀孕,有时她们会专门为这次怀孕挑选伴侣,或者通过其他多种受精方式。

A number of those couples who put off having children are experiencing what might be called the thirty-seven-year-old syndrome, in which couples approaching the end of the womans childbearing years are opting to have at least one child before the woman reaches an age at which pregnancy is unwise or impossible. This countervailing trend became apparent in the 1980s and continued through the early 2000s. A phenomenon surfacing at about the same time was that of unmarried women not only welcoming but actively seeking pregnancy, sometimes with partners selected only for this occasion or through any of a number of other fertilization methods.

不同社会对生育更多或更少孩子的需求各不相同。在农业社会,尤其是在土地充足的地区,人们往往渴望拥有大家庭,因为孩子往往是一项经济资产。在工业社会,抚养孩子的成本更高,家庭往往生育更少的孩子。如果这种不育夫妇的趋势持续下去,社会将不得不寻找其他方式来繁衍后代。对美国来说,这很可能意味着移民数量的增加。

Reasons for desiring more or fewer children vary in different societies. In agricultural societies, especially if land is plentiful, people are likely to desire large families because children tend to be an economic asset. In industrial societies, where children are costlier, families tend to have fewer of them. If the trend toward childless couples continues, society will have to find some other way to reproduce itself. For the United States, this may well mean an increase in immigration.

家庭模式与家庭功能的匹配

Matching Family Patterns With Family Functions

什么样的家庭结构最能满足这些功能?这很难说,因为它取决于个人的心理发展、技术发展以及社会需求。让我们结合现代西方社会,来探讨一下家庭群体的演变。

What family structure best meets these functions? That’s hard to say because it depends on individuals’ psychological development and the technology and exigencies of the society. Let’s consider the variations of family groups in reference to modern Western society.

小宝贝们(有时)。

The little darlings (sometimes).

配合数量和稳定性

Number and Stability of Mates

如前所述,我们的社会以一夫一妻制的家庭模式,即一个家庭由一男一女组成,作为其“理想类型”。为什么呢?

As stated earlier, our society has a monogamous model of the family, in which a family group includes a male and a female, as its “ideal type.” Why?

原因之一是,这种家庭结构有利于繁衍。鉴于目前的技术,这就是社会自我繁衍的方式。如果生殖技术需要三个(或仅一个)个体才能繁衍,那么配偶数量就会有所不同。

One of the reasons is that this family grouping works well for reproduction. Given current technology, that is the way society reproduces itself. If reproductive technology required three (or only one) for reproduction, there would be pressure for a different number of mates.

另一个原因是孩子占用了人们大量的时间。单亲家庭很难满足孩子或父母的心理需求。事实上,双亲家庭很难满足孩子和父母的心理需求,尤其是在父母双方都工作的情况下。这给社会机构带来了两种压力。一种压力是扩大家庭,要么引入第三个伴侣,要么扩大家庭,将祖父母、姑姑或叔叔纳入主要家庭单位。第二种压力是社会需要发展日托等机构,以减轻家庭的部分育儿负担。

Another reason is that children take enormous amounts of time. A one-parent family has a difficult time meeting either the child’s or the parents psychological needs. As a matter of fact, a two-parent family has a difficult time meeting the child’s and the parents’ psychological needs, especially if both parents are working. This places two types of pressure on social institutions. One pressure is for an extension of the family, either by including a third mate or by extending the family and including grandparents, aunts, or uncles as part of the primary family unit. The second pressure is for society to develop institutions such as day care to remove part of the childrearing burden from the family.

家庭由一夫一妻制的男性和女性组成的第三个重要原因是为了个人的心理调节。一些社会学家认为,“三人成众”并非一句老生常谈。个体有被接纳和被爱的心理需求,这使得某种类型的伴侣成为必需,而对安全感的需求则促使个体选择单一伴侣。有些人可能更喜欢拥有多个伴侣,但很少有人希望自己的伴侣拥有多个伴侣。婚外发展出的牢固友谊常常会导致强烈的嫉妒感。这种感觉在某种程度上是遗传的;大多数物种都发展出了促进个体基因传播的本能,人类也不例外。

A third important reason the family group consists of a monogamous male and female is for the psychological adjustment of the individuals. According to some social scientists, “three’s a crowd” is more than just a pat phrase. Individuals have psychological needs to be accepted and loved, making mates of some type necessary, and the need for security argues for a single mate. Some individuals might prefer more than one mate for themselves, but few would prefer that their mate have more than one mate. The development of strong friendships outside of marriage often results in strong feelings of jealousy. Those feelings are in part genetic; most species have developed instincts that encourage the propagation of the individual’s genes, and humankind is no exception.

一个传统的家庭。© Golden Pixels LLC/Alamy Stock Photo

A traditional family. © Golden Pixels LLC/Alamy Stock Photo

进化心理学的最新研究强调了这一心理层面。一些专家声称,那些有助于生育的特质会在个体中逐渐培养,并且生理机能与人类特征之间存在关联。因此,虽然一对一交配的倾向很强,但雄性和雌性也都倾向于出轨并寻找其他伴侣。

Recent work in evolutionary psychology emphasizes this psychological aspect. Some experts claim that those traits leading to procreation will be fostered in individuals and that there is a relationship between physiology and human characteristics. Thus, while there is a strong tendency toward one-to-one mating, there is also a strong tendency in both the male and the female to stray and have other mates.

最后,第四个原因是,从社会角度来看,一夫一妻制的关系为大多数人提供了配偶,因为男性和女性的出生数量几乎相等。

Finally, a fourth reason is that from society’s point of view the monogamous relationship provides a mate for most people because males and females are born in nearly equal numbers.

如前所述,即使是一夫一妻制的关系,也存在一定频率的配偶更替(称为连续一夫一妻制),并且婚姻中也存在一定程度的不忠行为。因此,虽然我们的制度是一夫一妻制,但严格意义上来说并非如此。

As pointed out earlier, even for relationships that are monogamous, there is a frequency of turnover of mates—called serial monogamy—and a certain amount of infidelity within marriages. Thus, while our system is monogamous, it is not so in a strict sense.

配偶的选择

Selection of Mates

西方社会通常允许个人自主选择配偶。这种选择过程并非普遍适用;在东方社会,家庭通常会为子女选择配偶。家庭选择的问题在于配偶可能不合拍,无法满足婚姻的心理功能。尽管正如一些东方朋友指出的那样,鉴于西方离婚和不幸婚姻的数量,自主选择似乎无法很好地满足婚姻的心理功能。

Western societies generally allow individuals to select their own mates. Such a selection process is by no means universal; families in Eastern societies often choose mates for the children. The problem with family selection is the possible incompatibility of mates and a failure to fulfill the psychological function of marriage, although, as some of our Eastern friends point out, given the number of divorces and unhappy marriages in the West, self-selection does not seem to do such a good job of meeting the psychological functions.

家庭选择的优势在于它更有可能实现经济和社会稳定的目标。当激素在择偶过程中发挥重要作用时,经济和社会因素往往会被忽视。

The advantage of family selection is that it is more likely to fulfill economic and social stability goals. When hormones play an important role in mate selection, economic and social considerations often are forgotten.

当然,正如我们在第四章中所见,一定程度的社会不稳定有助于文化传播。西方社会比东方社会更好地适应技术变革的原因之一,或许在于自我择偶会创造社会不稳定,从而促成并产生变革。

Of course, as we saw in Chapter 4, some degree of social instability can be helpful for a society to allow cultural diffusion. One of the reasons Western societies have adapted better than Eastern societies to the changing technologies may be that self-selection of mates creates social instability that allows and generates change.

其他西方家庭 家庭的特征和功能

Other Western Family Characteristics and Functions of the Family

我们可以继续列举西方家庭的特征并讨论它们的功能,但篇幅有限,而且这最好留给你们自己去做。想想其他特征,比如结婚年龄。估算一下平均结婚年龄是多少(本章后面会提供相关信息),然后试着解释在这个年龄结婚有什么作用。为什么不更早一些,比如13岁左右,等到人们性发育到可以生育的时候呢?

We could go on listing Western family characteristics and discussing their function, but there isn’t space, and besides, it is an activity best left to you. Think of other characteristics, such as the age at marriage. Estimate what the average age is (later in the chapter we give you the information), and then try to explain what functions are served by getting married at that age. Why not earlier, say at age thirteen or so, as soon as people are sufficiently developed sexually to have children?

关于家庭功能的另一个有趣的问题是,随着社会年龄结构的变化,家庭可能会发生什么变化。请看图9.2,它显示了老年人口占总人口比例的增长。在这种情况下,家庭可能会发生什么变化?家庭单位将如何应对这种人口结构变化带来的变化?

Another interesting question in relation to the functions of the family is what is likely to happen to the family as the age structure of society changes. Consider Figure 9.2, which shows the increase in the elderly as a percentage of the total population. What is likely to happen to the family as this occurs? How will the family unit deal with the changes incurred by such a population shift?

最后一个问题是单亲家庭数量大幅增加,尤其是在低收入阶层,单亲家庭已成主流,对社会稳定的影响。单亲家庭数量增加的原因是什么?它会延续并加剧社会体系中的不平等吗?如果会,我们应该如何应对?现实情况是——在高收入阶层,传统婚姻仍然是常态。父母双方都有工作,虽然遇到困难,但他们有足够的收入来应对。在低收入阶层,传统婚姻是个例外。母亲既要照顾孩子,又要挣钱养家,而且收入微薄。她面临着三重劣势——工资低、抚养孩子所需的支持少、以及孩子父亲提供的经济支持少——这意味着她的孩子很可能很难与那些拥有两份高薪工作、两个人共同抚养孩子的富裕家庭的孩子竞争。

A final question concerns the impact of the large increase in single-parent families, especially at lower income levels where it is now predominant, on the stability of society. What is the cause of that increase? Will it perpetuate, and increase, inequality in the system? And, if so, what should and can be done about it? Here is the reality—traditional marriage is still the norm at higher income levels. Both parents work, and, while they have troubles, they have the income to deal with those troubles. At low income levels traditional marriage is the exception. The mother is both caregiver and breadwinner with a job that pays a low wage. She faces a triple disadvantage—low pay, little childrearing support, and little financial support from the father of the child—which means that her children will likely have a hard time competing with those of a well-off married family with two high paying jobs and two people to share the childrearing.

下一节,我们将探讨当今的美国家庭。阅读时,请思考家庭的功能,以及家庭特征如何更好地履行这些功能。

In the next section, we look at the US family today. As you read, consider the functions of the family and how well the characteristics fulfill those functions.

图9.21900 年至 2060 年美国各年龄段人口(百万)美国老龄化问题。预计到 2050 年,约有 25% 的美国人将超过 65 岁。(来源:美国人口普查局,十年一次的人口普查和 2017 年人口预测(2020-2060 年)。参考:www.prb.org/the-us-population-is-growing-older and-the-gender-gap-in-life-expectancy-is-narrowing/

Figure 9.2US population by age group (millions), 1900 to 2060. The aging of the United States. By the year 2050, it is expected that about 25 percent of Americans will be over the age of sixty-five. (Source: US Census Bureau, decennial censuses and vintage 2017 population projections (2020-2060). For reference: www.prb.org/the-u-s-population-is-growing-olderand-the-gender-gap-in-life-expectancy-is-narrowing/)

当今美国的家庭

The Family in the United States Today

二十世纪美国生活发生革命性变化的原因之一是,我们从一个以农业和乡村为主的国家,转变为一个以商业、工业和城市为主的国家。随着十九世纪末二十世纪初人口大规模迁入城市,住房成本上升,家庭规模和住房规模都缩小了。人们不再主要在家工作,尽管最初大多数女性都留在家中照顾家庭。然而,省力家用电器和计划生育技术的进步,让女性得以从事休闲和面向市场的活动。孩子们不再像在农场那样需要那么多的家务帮助;每个家庭的孩子数量下降,城市的娱乐活动常常吸引着父母和孩子们走向不同的方向。

One of the causes of the revolutionary changes in twentieth-century life in the United States was our massive transition from an agricultural, rural nation to one that is mainly commercial-industrial and urban. With the mass movement of people to cities throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, housing costs increased and both family and home size shrank. People no longer worked mainly at home, although initially most women stayed home to care for the family. However, technological advances in labor-saving household appliances and family planning freed women for leisure and market-oriented activities. Childrens help around the house was no longer required as much as it was on the farm; the number of children per family declined, and the city’s recreational offerings often drew parents and children in different directions.

现代交通工具——尤其是20世纪20年代开始普及的汽车——使我们成为一个忙碌的民族;家成了睡觉或逃离的地方。汽车本身和拥有两辆车的家庭在很大程度上促成了二战后通勤郊区的形成。战后,在商业财富、广告和信贷经济的推动下,生活富裕,帮助我们摆脱了19世纪“不浪费,不匮乏”的清教徒伦理,在那个时代,负债意味着耻辱。家庭规模缩小,父母双方都工作的家庭数量急剧增加——通常两人都有高收入——导致许多人从郊区回归城市生活,因为许多人寻求快速发展的乐趣和满足感。

Modern transport—the car in particular, which came into widespread use in the 1920s— served to make us an on-the-go nation; home became a place to sleep or to get away from. The car itself and the two-car family helped in large measure to build the post-World War II commuter suburb. Postwar affluence, fed by commercial wealth, advertising, and the credit economy, helped lure us away from the “waste not, want not” Puritan ethic of the nineteenth century, when debt meant disgrace. Smaller families and the dramatic increase in the number of families in which both parents work—often earning two high incomes—have led to a return from the suburbs to city life, as many seek the distractions and satisfactions of the fast track.

随着女性在家庭之外扮演更重要的角色,她们对男性生存的依赖有所减弱。此外,许多其他因素也促使女性更加自给自足,并在婚姻内外寻求满足感。如今,男性和女性对婚姻以及彼此的要求都更高,这加剧了现代生活的压力。完全解放的男性(目前仍然为数不多)会与妻子共同承担重大决定、角色和工作,但许多女性发现,即使她们全职工作,她们仍然承担着大部分的家务。在其他家庭中,父权制男性很难接受妻子的自主权,但在收入较高、父母双方都有工作的家庭中,许多女性还是会做出调整。在收入较低的情况下在收入水平相同的情况下,男性不仅工资较低,而且找工作也更加困难。这使得母亲承担了更大的责任。她必须成为全职母亲,全职养家糊口。这样做的好处是她实际上拥有了自主权;她可以做决定。坏处是,她承担的责任几乎是无法满足的。父亲或现任男友有时会陪伴孩子,可能会试图扮演家长的角色,但实际上他通常做不到,因为他既不赚钱,也不承担家庭重担。母亲通常把他视为一个需要照顾的孩子。嫁给他只会增加她的责任,而不是减少。

With women playing more vital roles away from home, their dependence on males for survival has lessened. Moreover, many other forces have driven women toward more self-sufficiency and a search for satisfaction both in marriage and outside of it. Today, both males and females demand more of marriage and of each other, which adds to the stresses of modern life. The fully liberated man (of whom there are still only a few) shares major decisions, roles, and work with his wife, but many women find that they continue to be allotted the major share of the domestic duties, even while working full-time. In other households, the patriarchal male finds great difficulty in accepting the wife’s autonomy, but at higher income levels, where both the mother and father have jobs, a great many do, nevertheless, make the adjustment. At lower level incomes, men not only earn lower pay, but they have a much harder time finding a job. This places even more responsibility on the mother. She must be full-time mother and full-time breadwinner. The positive aspect of this is that she is de facto autonomous; she makes the decisions. The bad aspect of this is that the demands on her are almost unmeetable. The father or current boyfriend, who is sometimes around for companionship and childcare, may attempt to play the role of patriarch, but in reality he generally cannot since he is not bringing in an income and pulling his load. The mother often sees him as just another child she has to deal with. Getting married to him would only increase her responsibilities, not reduce them.

随着越来越多的女性进入劳动力市场,父亲必须承担起养育孩子的重任,尽管这并不总是最巧妙的。

As more and more women have entered the labor force, fathers have had to become nurture providers, not always with the most finesse.

即使双职工家庭共同承担责任,也无法全职照顾孩子。这种情况给学校带来了更多责任,许多学校不仅提供午餐,还提供早餐,并且可能在正常上课时间之后继续开放,为孩子提供地方,直到父母下班。幸运的家庭找到了好的日托中心,但这些中心的分布并不均衡,而且往往收费昂贵。此外,大多数好的日托中心都有候补名单。许多孩子放学后回到空荡荡的房子或公寓,独自照顾自己,有时甚至还要照顾弟弟妹妹,直到父母回家。

Even with shared responsibilities, the two-earner family cannot provide full-time care for children. This situation has placed more responsibility on the schools, many of which provide not only lunches but also breakfasts and may stay open beyond the normal school day to provide someplace for the child to remain until the parents’ workday is over. Fortunate families have found good day-care centers, but these are not equitably distributed and tend to be expensive. Moreover, most good centers have waiting lists. Many children come home after school to empty houses or apartments and fend for themselves, sometimes even supervising younger brothers or sisters, until a parent arrives.

20世纪60年代的性革命以及男女双方体验到的独立感的增强,放松了许多道德束缚。现代城市的流动性和轻松的匿名性使得丈夫和妻子能够扩大朋友圈。这种自由常常使他们不再满足于只有一个终身伴侣。最初,它导致了一种被称为“连续婚姻”的现象,即人们一生中会拥有多位丈夫或妻子,但每次不超过一位。由于每个伴侣都可能为新婚带来一个或多个孩子,并可能与其他前任共同拥有这些孩子的监护权,家庭关系变得复杂,对情感和物质资源构成挑战。近年来,“连续婚姻”演变成了“连续关系”,即两个人从未结婚,因此当关系结束时,他们更容易继续生活。

The sexual revolution of the 1960s and the enhanced sense of independence experienced by both men and women loosened many moral restraints. The mobility and easy anonymity of modern cities have made it possible for husbands and wives to widen their circle of friends. Often this freedom has caused them to become less content with one lifelong mate. Initially it led to a phenomenon described as serial marriage, in which people have several husbands or wives over the course of their lives, although not more than one at a time. Because each partner may bring to the new marriage one or more children and maybe sharing the custody of those children with other former mates, family relationships can become complicated and challenging to emotional and material resources. More recently, serial marriage has evolved into serial relationships, where two individuals never get married, thereby making it easier to move on when the relationship ends.

尽管这些角色发生了变化,但传统家庭仍然是美国大多数人的目标,并且我们认为,如果你们还没有婚姻和家庭,那么你们中的大多数人都希望在未来的某个时候看到婚姻和家庭。

Despite these changing roles, the traditional family remains a goal for most people in the United States, and we suspect that most of you would like to see marriage and a family somewhere in your future if you do not already have one.

图 9.3概述了美国家庭的一些特征及其在过去三十年中的变化。请注意,只有大约一半的美国家庭由已婚夫妇组成。未婚女性户主家庭的数量也往往明显多于男性户主家庭的数量。女性户主家庭数量较多的原因之一是女性比男性寿命更长。另一个原因是传统家庭的瓦解,尤其是在低收入阶层。

Figure 9.3 gives you an overview of some US family characteristics and how they have changed in the last thirty years. Notice that only about half of all US households consist of married couples. There also tends to be significantly more unmarried female-headed households than there are male-headed households. One reason for the greater number of female-headed households is the fact that women live longer than men. Another is the breakdown of the traditional family, especially at the lower end of the income scale.

图9.3各类型家庭的百分比。(来源:美国人口普查局,1940 年十年一次的人口普查,以及 1968 年至 2020 年的当前人口调查,年度社会和经济补充报告)

Figure 9.3Percent of households by type. (Source: US Census Bureau, Decennial Census, 1940, and Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplements, 1968 to 2020)

正如我们之前所讨论的,如今女性既要维持家庭,又要养活许多家庭。原因之一是受教育程度较低的男性缺乏就业机会。由于科技的变革,一些需要体力而非大量思考的工作已被机器取代。这导致未受过教育的男性就业前景黯淡。那些找不到工作的人只能依赖他人的收入。这改变了女性考虑与男性结婚的决策过程。她们不再将男性视为家庭的经济支柱,而是越来越多地将女性视为另一个经济负担;她们认为即使男性是孩子的父亲,不嫁给男性也会过得更好。男性只是多了一个需要养活的嘴巴。在高收入阶层,受过高等教育的男性仍然拥有良好的收入前景,而在高收入阶层,传统家庭更为常见。女性认为,即使男性在家庭中没有太多帮助,他们至少也能提供一些收入,有时甚至是很好的伴侣。

As we discussed earlier, today women both maintain and support many families. One reason for this is the lack of jobs for less educated males. Because of changes in technology, jobs requiring strength but not a lot of thinking have been replaced by machines. This has led men without education to have few job prospects. Those who cannot find jobs become dependent on others for their income. This changes the decision process for women thinking about marrying them. Rather than seeing them as a source of financial support for the family, more and more they are seeing them as simply another financial burden; they see themselves as better off without being married to them, even if they are the father of their children. They are just another mouth to feed. At upper-income levels, highly educated men have earning prospects that are still good, and at these higher income levels, the traditional family is more common. Women figure that even if men don’t help all that much around the house, they at least provide some income, and are sometimes even good companions.

为了让你更好地理解正在发生的变化,本章的下一部分将探讨美国的婚介和“约会”问题。由于本文介绍的约会内容大部分你都很熟悉,因此我们将以略微不同的方式进行探讨——仿佛它是由一位人类学家撰写的,探讨的是来自不同文化背景的人。这能让你更客观地看待你所关注的问题。

To provide you with a better sense of the changes that are occurring, in the next part of the chapter we consider the issue of matchmaking and “dating” in the United States. Because much of the material presented about dating is familiar to you, we approach it in a slightly different way—as if it were written by an anthropologist about people from another culture. This allows you to take a more objective look at issues in which you are active.

婚介和约会

Matchmaking and Dating

由于美国习俗允许自主选择伴侣,最终结婚的人必须先见面。人们见面的方式包括互联网匹配服务、学校、工作场所、宗教机构、体育运动、酒吧等社交场所以及朋友圈。Facebook 等社交网络允许人们与所在地理区域以外的人保持联系,而在线约会和社交网站则为人们提供了各种各样的机会,让他们可以结识志趣相投的新朋友,原因多种多样,从一夜情到认真寻找长期伴侣,不一而足。

Because US custom allows self-selection of mates, people who eventually marry must first meet. Some of the ways people meet are through Internet matching services, school, work, religious institutions, sports, social meeting places such a bars, and networks of friends. Social networks such as Facebook allow people to stay in touch with others outside their immediate geographic area, and online dating and social mingling sites provide all types of opportunities for individuals to meet new people with similar interests for various reasons, from a casual hookup or fling to a serious attempt to meet a longterm partner.

20 世纪 40 年代的约会。

Dating in the 1940s.

两个人见面后,需要互相了解。这个过程在过去被称为约会,但如今这个词已经很少使用了。尽管如此,由于没有更好的词,我们仍将使用这个词。约会可以是正式的,也可以是非正式的。约会是人们相互了解的时刻。它也让他们有机会在家庭之外的人际交往中评估自己,并且是一种娱乐形式。在 20 世纪 50 年代,约会通常是正式的,男孩去接女孩并陪她参加社交活动。虽然男孩不再需要征得女孩父母的同意才能带女孩出去(就像 19 世纪那样),但他去女孩家接她时有义务见到父母并交谈一番。在这些通常很尴尬的会面中,父母会“打量一下这个小伙子”,并告诉他他们预计女儿在某个时间回家(如果是周末晚上,则是午夜)。

After two people meet, they need to get to know one another. This process in the past was called dating, but that term is used far less today. Nonetheless, we will still use the term for lack of a better one. Dating can be either formal or informal. Dating is a time when people get acquainted with each other. It also gives them an opportunity to evaluate themselves in an interpersonal situation outside the family and serves as a form of recreation. In the 1950s, dating was often formal, with the boy picking up the girl and escorting her to a social event. Although the boy was no longer required to ask her parents’ permission to take the girl out (as he would have been in the 1800s), he was obliged to see the parents and exchange some conversation when he came to the girl’s house to pick her up. At these—often awkward—meetings, the parents would “size up the lad” and inform him that they expected their daughter home by a certain hour (say, midnight, if it were a weekend evening).

如今,安排约会通常更加随意。通常,无论男女,都会有人给对方发短信,提议一起做点什么,通常是作为一个更大的团体。人们可能会从这个团体中结成对子,有时只是为了一夜情,有时则是为了建立一段长期关系。理想情况下,恋爱关系中的双方都知道结成对子的原因,以及这段关系的本质,比如:对方是否应该和其他人结成对子。如果双方对这段关系在见面、交谈和与他人相处方面给予他们的自由度有不同的理解,往往会引发问题。人们通常会发展出一套词汇来描述个人对恋爱关系的感受。例如,在我的大学里,一些想要一对一恋爱关系的学生被描述为“尼龙搭扣”。

Today, arranging a date is generally much more informal. Often one person, male or female, will text the other and suggest they get together and possibly do something, often as part of a larger group. Individuals may pair off from that group, sometimes just for a one-time hookup, at other times to establish a longer-term relationship. Ideally, both individuals in the relationship know the reason for pairing off, and what the nature of the relationship is, such as: whether it is ok that the other person pairs off with someone else. When both individuals have a different sense of how much freedom the relationship allows them in terms of seeing, talking to, and being with other individuals, trouble often results. A vocabulary often develops to describe how individuals feel about relationships. For example, at my college some students who want a one-to-one relationship are described as “Velcro.”

大多数关系并非必然以婚姻告终。通常情况下,一个人会和各种各样的人交往,直到找到一个合适的人。事实上,很可能有好几个合适的人,或者根本没有合适的。一个八年级的女孩解释说:“明年我们就上高中了,到时候我就会甩掉他,去找个二年级的学生约会。没有哪个一年级的女生会和一年级的男生约会!”年纪大一点的人可能不太在意年龄或学年,而更在意情感、经济和社会适应性。

Most relationships are not necessarily expected to end in marriage. Usually an individual has relationships with a variety of people before finding one that seems right. In fact, there are likely to be several right ones, or no right one. An eighth-grade girl explains: “Next year we’ll be in high school, and then I’ll ditch him to date a sophomore. No freshman girl ever dates a freshman!” Older individuals are likely to be less concerned about age or year in school and more concerned with emotional, economic, and social compatibility.

一旦高中和大学毕业,人们在约会时往往会更多地考虑对方是否“适婚”。这个人是否适合我共度人生、生儿育女、白头偕老?他们会让我的生活更美好,还是只会增加更多负担?女性面临的抉择最为艰难,因为女性通常最终承担起养育孩子的主要责任。如果男性能够放弃一段感情和孩子,他们就可能对寻找适婚对象的兴趣减少,而更关注的是找到一个可以共度美好时光、让他们自我感觉良好的人。

Once one moves beyond high school and college, people tend to give relatively more thought in dating to whether the person is “marriageable material.” Is this someone I can build a life with, have children with, and grow old with? Will they make my life better, or just add more burdens? Women face the hardest decisions since women generally end up with the primary responsibility for childrearing. To the degree that men can walk away from a relationship and child, they can take less interest in finding marriageable material, and more in finding someone to have a good time with now, and someone who makes them feel good about themselves.

性与单身

Sex and Singles

网上约会

Online dating.

© www.cartoonstock.com

© www.cartoonstock.com

脱离传统家庭的一个重要原因是性道德规范的变化,以及人们对男性父亲责任的重视程度。即使在同一个城镇,人们的道德规范和性规范也存在巨大差异;始于20世纪70年代的性革命以复杂的模式蔓延。根据个人的成长经历,性关系可以在恋爱关系的任何阶段开始。大学生中对性关系的禁令正在减少,“勾搭”(即与他人发生性关系,且无需任何感情承诺)的情况有所增加。如今,学生们经常谈论“炮友”,而不是“女朋友”或“男朋友”。

An important reason for the movement away from the traditional family is the change in sexual mores and codes, and the degree to which they put responsibilities on men who father a child. There are enormous differences in the mores and sexual codes, even within the same town; the sexual revolution that started in the 1970s spread in a complicated pattern. Depending on the individual’s upbringing, sexual relations can begin at any stage of the relationship. Prohibitions against sexual relations are decreasing among college students, and “hooking up,” in which one has sex with someone else supposedly without any emotional commitment, has increased. Today, students often talk about “friends with benefits” rather than about their “girlfriend” or “boyfriend.”

在大城市和郊区社区,性关系通常早在12岁就开始,这或许可以作为提早结婚的理由。然而,在宗教或其他有组织的道德标准盛行的家庭中,“好女孩不做”的口号仍然具有一定影响力,在这样的家庭中,女孩们会等到恋爱关系发展到认真的阶段,甚至更晚,才会发生性行为。需要注意的是,双重标准仍然存在;对于男性来说,指导方针没有“好男孩不做”那么严格。

In large cities and in suburban communities, sexual relations often begin as early as age twelve, which could be an argument for starting marriage much earlier. In families in which religion or other organized moral standards prevail, however, the slogan “good girls don’t” still carries some weight, and in such families, girls wait until the serious stage of a relationship, or later, before having intercourse. It should be noted that a dual standard still exists; for males, there is a less strict guideline than “good boys don’t.”

目前,美国超过40%的新生儿是由未婚女性所生,而黑人女性的比例甚至更高。超过70%的黑人儿童是由未婚母亲所生。在整个黑人社区,超过50%的单亲家庭的户主是从未结过婚的母亲。

More than 40 percent of US births are now to unmarried women, and for black women the proportion is even higher. More than 70 percent of all black children are born to unmarried mothers. In the black community as a whole, over 50 percent of all one-parent families are headed by mothers who have never been married.

在整个20世纪80年代,青少年怀孕问题主要被视为黑人群体的问题。但从20世纪90年代开始,随着白人青少年怀孕比例的上升,这个问题已超越了种族界限。21世纪初,所有种族和民族的青少年生育率均有所下降,但非裔美国人和西班牙裔青少年的生育率仍然高于其他群体,其中约20%的非裔美国人生育的子女由青少年母亲所生,而白人这一比例仅为10%。每1000名青少年女性的生育率约为17,尽管在过去十年中大幅下降,但仍是所有工业化国家中最高的。(避孕措施使用率的提高和禁欲率的提高都是导致生育率下降的原因。)

Through the 1980s, the issue of teenage pregnancy was seen as a predominantly black issue, but beginning in the 1990s, with an increasing proportion of white teenage pregnancies, the issue now extends beyond racial lines. In the early 2000s, teenage birthrates declined across all racial and ethnic lines, although rates for African American and Hispanic teens continue to be higher than those for other groups, with about 20 percent of African American births being to teenage mothers compared to 10 percent for whites. The birthrate is about 17 per 1,000 teenage women, which, although a significant decrease over the past decade, is nonetheless still the highest rate of all industrialized nations. (Both increased use of contraception and increased abstinence are credited for the decline.)

单身人士——实际上,任何未处于一夫一妻制关系中的人士,无论已婚或单身——面临的另一个问题是性传播疾病。除了淋病和梅毒等历史悠久的性病外,现在还有疱疹、衣原体感染、生殖器疣、艾滋病毒和艾滋病。

Another issue that confronts singles—indeed, anyone, married or single, who is not in a monogamous relationship—is sexually transmitted disease. In addition to centuries-old venereal diseases such as gonorrhea and syphilis, there are now herpes, chlamydia, genital warts, HIV, and AIDS.

即使是亲密的关系也常常不会走向婚姻。人们在最终结婚之前,往往会经历几段认真的恋爱关系。如今,情侣们在决定结婚之前同居一段时间也很常见,时间从一个月到几年不等,甚至有些人决定终身不婚。同居比过去更加普遍,越来越多的父母接受孩子与他人同居,而不是立即结婚。20世纪60年代,美国只有约10%的情侣在婚前同居,但到了21世纪初,这一比例已接近50%。

Even intense relationships often do not lead to marriage. Individuals often have a number of serious relationships before they finally marry. It is also now common for couples to live together for periods of anywhere from a month to many years before making a decision to marry, and some decide never to marry. Living together is much more common than it was in the past, and more and more parents are accepting that their children will live together with someone rather than get married immediately In the 1960s, only about 10 percent of couples in the United States moved in together before marriage, but in the early 2000s, that percentage is closer to 50 percent.

在决定是否结婚(以及与谁结婚)时,浪漫的爱情固然重要,但越来越多的人除了爱情之外,还会考虑其他问题,尤其是在双方都规划事业的恋爱关系中。谁的事业优先?如果他们被分配到不同的工作地点会怎样?如果一方支持另一方继续深造,双方各自承担哪些义务?为了应对这些复杂的问题,许多情侣正在签订正式的婚姻合同(婚前协议),明确双方的义务和期望,以确保爱情关系不至于破裂。

In deciding whether (and whom) to marry, romantic love plays a role, but increasingly individuals are considering, in addition to love, other issues, especially in relationships in which both members are planning a career. Whose career will come first? What happens if they are assigned jobs in different locations? If one supports the other in order to further his or her education, what obligations are incurred? To meet these complex issues a number of couples are entering into formal marriage contracts (prenuptial agreements) that spell out the obligations and expectations of both so that the love relationship is not shattered.

经过一段时间的慎重考虑后,大多数人都会结婚。婚姻是男女之间一份或多或少永久的契约,他们应共同生活,并为子女提供住所。这份契约受到法律的约束,在很多情况下,还受到宗教的约束。

After a period of decision, most individuals marry. Marriage is a more or less permanent contract between a man and a woman under which they are expected to live together and to provide a home for their children. The contract has legal, and in many cases religious, sanctions.

缔结这份契约不仅意味着夫妻双方承担许多新的责任,也意味着他们所属的家庭以及其他各种社会群体承担责任。伴侣双方会立即承担新的身份:夫妻身份、姻亲身份和家庭成员身份。即使双方此前曾同居,婚姻也会带来重大改变。

Entering into this contract creates many new responsibilities involving not only the couple but also the families from which they came and various other social groups. Tire partners immediately assume new statuses: the husband/wife status, the in-law status, and the family status. Even if the parties have previously lived together, marriage involves a major change.

如此重要的角色转变,尽管令人向往且愉悦,却需要大量的适应。美国社会的快速变革使得适应过程更加艰难。在一个静态的社会中,人们对夫妻双方所期望的角色心知肚明,但在我们这样一个充满活力的社会中,人们很容易对彼此的期望感到困惑。这种困惑在不同信仰、国籍或种族的跨性别婚姻中可能会加剧。即使风险消除,我们共同的多元化传统也在不断改变着每个人的社会模式。因此,适应性已成为婚姻调整中一项重要的人格特质。

Such an important shift of roles, even though desirable and pleasurable, involves a good deal of adjustment. This has not been made easier by the swift pace of social change in the United States. In a static society, the role expected of each spouse is well understood, but in a dynamic society such as ours it is easy to be uncertain about just what is expected. This confusion may be increased in cross-marriages between faiths, nationalities, or races. Even if hazards are eliminated, our common heritage of diversity is constantly changing the social pattern for everyone. Hence, adaptability has become an important personality characteristic in marital adjustment.

孩子们

Children

正如我们之前所述,对于越来越多的家庭来说,结婚生子并非必然联系在一起。这导致了所谓的“底层阶级”的诞生,他们几乎没有机会摆脱从小就伴随的贫困。与中产阶级相比,这个底层阶级面临着截然不同的压力。

As we stated earlier, for an increasing number of families, marriage and having children are not necessarily linked. This has contributed to creating what is sometimes called an underclass that has little chance of escaping the poverty it grew up with. This underclass has to deal with a different set of pressures than the middle class.

底层阶级的人们通常接受的教育水平很低,也很少受到鼓励去利用他们所拥有的教育机会。他们发现自己身处的社会环境几乎看不到长期发展的机会,并将这种希望融入到他们的世界观和行为中。他们最关心的往往是自身的安全和温饱,而这些通常远非中产阶级(甚至中下阶层)人士所关心的。

People in the underclass often get a poor education and little encouragement to take advantage of the educational opportunities open to them. They find themselves in social environments that offer little hope for long-term advancement and build that into their worldview and actions. Their immediate concerns are often for their safety and getting enough to eat, concerns generally far from the minds of middle-class (and even lower-middle-class) individuals.

中产阶级文化虽然或多或少地容忍同居,但如果中产阶级人士有孩子或想要孩子,往往会给他们施加压力,迫使他们结婚。因此,大多数中产阶级夫妇选择结婚。婚姻确立了父母双方的经济责任,即使父母分居,双方仍对子女负有法律责任。因此,没有法定监护权的一方要承担子女抚养费,甚至可能还要支付赡养费。稍后,当我们讨论离婚问题时,我们会更详细地讨论这些问题。

Middle-class culture, although it has more or less condoned living together, tends to put pressure on middle-class individuals to get married if they have children or want to have children. Thus, most middle-class couples choose marriage. Marriage establishes the economic responsibilities for both mother and father, and even if the parents split up, both retain legal responsibility for the children. Thus, the spouse who does not have legal custody is responsible for child support and possibly alimony. Later, when we consider divorce, we deal with these issues in more detail.

决定要孩子并非易事。养育孩子意味着重大的责任和辛勤的劳动。这通常意味着要放弃一方配偶的潜在收入,或者,如果父母双方都工作,还要担心孩子的保育、教育和隐私问题。此外,养育子女不再是十八岁以后的事情了。许多成年子女回家与父母同住(见图9.4)。

The decision to have a child is not an easy one. Children involve major responsibilities and hard work. Often it means giving up one spouses potential income or, if both parents work, worrying about child care, education, and privacy. Moreover, parenting is no longer eighteen years and out. Many adult children are coming home to live with their parents (see Figure 9.4).

尽管孩子给夫妻带来了责任和辛勤的付出,但大多数人认为这些回报是值得的。然而,现在夫妻愿意生育的孩子数量比两三代人之前少,而且在20世纪40年代和50年代短暂上升之后,平均生育数量一直在下降。

In spite of the responsibility and hard work children bring to a couple, most people feel that the rewards are compensatory. The number of children that couples are willing to have, however, is smaller than two or three generations ago, and following a temporary rise in the 1940s and 1950s, the average has been dropping.

长者

Senior Citizens

随着孩子们长大并离开家去上大学、工作或建立自己的家庭,家庭规模逐渐缩小到最初的两个人。

As children grow up and leave home for college, for a job, or to establish their own households, the family dwindles in size to the original two.

图9.418-34岁成年人的居住安排:1975年和2020年 2020年,与父母同住的年轻人数量多于与配偶同住的年轻人数量。(数据来源:美国人口普查局,1975年和2020年《当前人口调查》年度社会和经济补充报告以及作者推断)

Figure 9.4Living arrangements of adults 18-34: 1975 and 2020. More young adults lived with parents than lived with a spouse in 2020. (Source: US Census Bureau, 1975 and 2020 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement and author extrapolations)

对于中产阶级理想的传统家庭来说,退休前还有几年时间,可能长达十五到二十年——在这段时间里,他们有时间更积极地参与社会和公民事务,或者,对于以前没有外出工作的配偶来说,可以去工作。陪伴如今是夫妻之间牢固的纽带。在养育子女的岁月中,共同的经历巩固了这种纽带,但如果夫妻想要保持幸福,就必须建立一种新的、令人满意的、没有孩子在家的生活模式。一般来说,夫妻能够适应。事实上,研究表明,夫妻的幸福感会随着孩子的出生而下降,而当孩子离开时,幸福感往往会恢复。因此,对于父母和孩子来说,孩子的成长都代表着一段断奶或解放的时期。当孩子们回来探望时,他们的关系已经建立在成人、友好的基础上,如果有孙辈,他们还能为祖父母带来新的生活乐趣。

For the middle-class ideal traditional family, a number of years then follow, perhaps as many as fifteen or twenty, before retirement—years in which there is time for more active participation in social and civic affairs or, for spouses who have not worked outside the home before, for employment. Companionship is now the strong bond between the couple. Shared experiences throughout the childrearing years cement this bond, but a new and satisfactory pattern of life without the children at home must be developed if the couple is to remain happy. Generally, couples are able to make the adjustment. In fact, research studies have shown that a couple’s happiness declines with the birth of a child and tends to renew when the children leave. Thus, for the parents no less than for the children, maturing of the children represents a period of weaning or emancipation. When the children return on visits, their relationship is on an adult, companionable basis, and if there are grandchildren, they can provide the grandparents with a new interest in life.

理想家庭并非总能实现。在不太理想的家庭中,夫妻双方无法忍受彼此,但因为没有足够的钱分开生活而不得不继续在一起,或者一方离开或已经离开另一方,去寻找他人或独自生活。无论是他们想分开而继续在一起,还是一方离开并建立新的家庭,夫妻中的一方或双方通常都会感到一种挥之不去的孤独感。另一种不太理想的家庭类型是,父母不愿与孩子说话,因为他们不得不兼职来偿还孩子的大学贷款,而孩子们却拖欠了贷款。不太理想的家庭有无数种不同的形式。对于不太理想的家庭来说,退休可能意味着被辞去目前的工作,转而从事一份低薪工作,而这份工作是维持生计所必需的。正如俄国小说家列夫·托尔斯泰在其长篇小说《安娜·卡列尼娜》的开篇所写:“幸福的家庭都是相似的,不幸的家庭各有各的不幸。”

The family ideal is not always reached. In the less-than-ideal family, the couple can’t stand each other but stay together because they don’t have enough money to live apart, or one leaves or has already left the other in order to take up with someone else or just to live alone. Whether they stay together when they want to be apart or one leaves and sets up another household, often there is a haunting loneliness for one or both members of the couple. Another lessthan-ideal family type is the one in which the parents aren’t speaking to the children because they have had to take second jobs to pay the kids’ college loans, which the kids have defaulted on. There are countless variations of the less-than-ideal family. For the less-than-ideal family, retirement can mean being kicked out of a current job and shunted into a low-paying one that is necessary to make ends meet. As the Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy wrote in the opening sentence of his novel Anna Karenina, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

当夫妻俩最终从固定工作岗位退休时,如果身体健康,许多夫妻还能继续工作多年。能否成功适应退休生活也取决于个人性格。有些人乐于摆脱日常工作和责任——他们足够灵活,很容易找到有趣的消遣方式——而另一些人则因为失去之前的工作而感到失落。健康和经济状况也是重要因素。

When the time finally comes for the couple to retire from their regular jobs, many couples, if in good health, still have years of activity ahead. Successful adjustment to retirement also depends on personal temperament. Some individuals welcome the release from routine and responsibility—they are flexible enough to have little trouble in finding interesting ways to spend their time—while others feel lost when deprived of their previous work. Health and money are also important factors.

家庭解体与离婚

Family Disorganization and Divorce

上一节描述了已婚夫妇维持婚姻状况的演变过程。然而,这种时间顺序越来越不典型。图9.5显示了自1900年以来的结婚率和离婚率。结婚率总体下降,2020年约为5.9;换句话说,每1000人中,每年有5.9人结婚。离婚率在20世纪70年代有所上升,但自20世纪80年代以来一直在下降。

The preceding section described the development over time of a married couple who remain married. More and more, this is a less typical chronology. Figure 9.5 gives the marriage rate and the divorce rate since 1900. The marriage rate has generally fallen and in 2020 was about 5.9; in other words, 5.9 people out of every 1,000 got married in a given year. The divorce rate increased in the 1970s but has been decreasing since the 1980s.

图9.51900 年至 2020 年的结婚和离婚情况。(资料来源:美国人口普查局、《美国统计摘要》、月度人口动态统计报告以及作者推断。)

Figure 9.5Marriages and divorces, 1900 to 2020.(Source: US Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, monthly Vital Statistics Report, and author extrapolations.)

然而,在考虑离婚率时,我们必须记住几个条件。例如,如果某一年每两桩婚姻中就有一桩离婚,这并不意味着该年有一半的婚姻以离婚告终;相反,在这一年,有些人结婚了,而另一些人离婚了,这些人的婚姻从一天到五十年甚至更久不等。

We must, however, remember several qualifications when considering the divorce rate. For instance, if in a given year there is one divorce for every two marriages, it does not mean that half the marriages in that year ended in divorce; rather, in that year some people got married and others, who had been married for anywhere from one day to fifty years or more, got divorced.

统计学家有各种方法来确定离婚婚姻的数量。一项针对一组已婚夫妇的研究表明,近40%的初婚以离婚告终,其中约80%的人会再婚,而近45%的再婚也以离婚告终。虽然现在大约每两桩婚姻中就有一桩是离婚的,但只有大约四分之一的家庭是单身家庭,因为许多离婚人士会再婚。

statisticians have various methods tor determining the number of marriages that end in divorce. One study of a group of married couples over time indicated that nearly 40 percent of first marriages end in divorce, about 80 percent of those people enter a second marriage, and almost 45 percent of the second marriages also end in divorce. Though we now have approximately one divorce for every two marriages, only about one in four households is a single-person household because many divorced people marry again.

人们为什么离婚?离婚的原因几乎和离婚的人数一样多。大多数原因都可以归结为某种不和谐:一方或双方都没有从婚姻中得到自己想要的东西。有时,会有第三者介入,一方觉得对方比另一方更有吸引力。但即使没有第三者,婚姻通常也会陷入困境。

Why Do People Get Divorced? There are almost as many reasons why people get divorced as there are divorces. Most can be combined into some type of incompatibility: One or both of the partners are not getting what they want out of the marriage. Sometimes a third party is involved whom one of the partners finds more attractive than his or her mate, but often the marriage would have been in trouble even if there had been no third party.

当我们思考婚姻制度时,离婚的数量并不令人意外。大多数友谊都无法长久,那么婚姻又何必呢?那些没有出现严重问题的婚姻,往往是双方拥有共同价值观,不仅彼此相爱,也尊重彼此的能力和正直的伴侣。符合这些特质的伴侣并不多,所以坚如磐石的婚姻并不多。

When we think about the institution of marriage, the number of divorces is not surprising. Most friendships don’t last a lifetime, so why should a marriage? Those marriages that don’t have serious problems often are with partners who share a common set of values and who not only love each other but also respect each other’s capabilities and integrity. Not many partners fit these characteristics, so there aren’t many rock-solid marriages.

人们结婚时常常希望、相信或期待伴侣会改变。婚姻顾问的一句箴言是,人是不会改变的,或者即使改变了,你也能预料到它会朝着与对方意愿相反的方向发展。在文字处理方面,大多数个人电脑都使用“所见即所得”(WYSIWYG,发音为 wiz-zee-wig)——所见即所得的演示方式。大多数求爱过程也涉及“所见即所得”(WYSIBTWYG,发音为 who know how)——所见即所得的演示方式。

People often marry in the hope, belief, or expectation that their partner will change. A maxim of marriage counselors is that people don’t change, or if they do change, you can expect it to be in the opposite direction from what the other partner wants. In word processing, most personal computers use WYSIWYG (pronounced wiz-zee-wig)—what you see is what you get—presentations. Most courtships involve WYSIBTWYG (pronounced who knows how)—what you see is better than what you get—presentations.

对离婚统计数据的几点警示离婚统计数据通常被用来衡量家庭的解体程度,而目前的高离婚率则被认为是美国家庭陷入严重困境的证据。然而,如今离婚率高于过去并非完全是因为家庭不幸福。在早期,许多夫妻即使婚姻生活不幸福,也会选择避免离婚。他们之所以选择离婚,是因为这意味着被社会排斥,或者对女性来说,意味着贫困,因为她们几乎没有机会过上好日子。随着离婚可能性的增加以及离婚变得更容易,越来越多的人选择离婚。不幸福的夫妻选择了这条路。而且,结婚的人越来越少,离婚的也越来越少。

Some Caution About Divorce Statistics Divorce statistics often are used as a measure of family disorganization, and the present high divorce rate is cited as proof that the US family is in serious trouble. However, higher divorce rates today than in the past are not entirely the result of more family unhappiness. In earlier generations, many couples avoided divorce even though their married life was unhappy. They avoided it because it meant social ostracism or, in the case of women, poverty, because there were few opportunities for them to earn a good living. As the possibilities for divorced people increased and it became easier to get divorces, more unhappy couples have chosen this route. Moreover, with fewer people getting married, there are fewer divorces.

离婚的合法理由

Legal Grounds for Divorce

离婚的合法理由有很多,且各州法律各不相同。其中包括:婚姻不和、通奸、遗弃、虐待、不赡养、重婚、重罪判决以及欺诈性合同。虽然离婚的合法理由确实值得关注且意义重大,但它们通常与夫妻想要结束婚姻的真正原因关系不大。通常,希望离婚的夫妻会合作,以实际或表面上满足必要的法律条件。

There are many legal grounds for divorce, and they vary with the laws of each state. Among these are incompatibility, adultery, desertion, cruelty, nonsupport, bigamy, felony conviction, and fraudulent contract. Although the legal grounds for divorce are of some interest and significance, often they have little to do with the real reason behind a couple’s desire to end a marriage. Often a husband and wife who wish to divorce cooperate to bring about real or apparent fulfillment of the necessary legal conditions.

从 20 世纪 70 年代开始,许多州引入了无过错离婚制度,即双方存在不可调和的分歧即可成为离婚的充分理由。根据这些法律,婚姻伴侣无需像以前那样被宣布有罪或有过错,这使离婚过程变得容易得多。在 20 世纪 90 年代,这一运动在某些圈子里又回来了。路易斯安那州引入了自愿契约婚姻,在这种婚姻中,人们更难选择离婚。在 21 世纪初,阿肯色州、亚利桑那州和路易斯安那州都允许合法的契约婚姻。在大多数州,您不必是州内居民即可在该州结婚,或将现有的婚姻“升级”为契约婚姻。因此,当有人求婚时,他或她现在可能必须说明这是契约婚姻求婚还是普通求婚。

Beginning in the 1970s, many states introduced no-fault divorces, in which irreconcilable differences serve as sufficient grounds for divorce. Under these laws, a marriage partner need not be declared guilty or at fault as was previously required, making the process of divorce much easier. In the 1990s, the movement shifted back in some circles. Louisiana introduced voluntary covenant marriages, in which divorce as an option is harder for people to get. In the early 2000s, legal covenant marriages were available in Arkansas, Arizona, and Louisiana. In most states, you do not have to be a state resident to get married in the state, or to “upgrade” an existing marriage into a covenant marriage. So, when someone proposes marriage, he or she may now have to specify whether it is a covenant marriage proposal or a regular marriage proposal.

分手很难

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

即使没有立约婚姻,离婚也常常会带来严重的困难,尤其是在夫妻共同拥有财产和子女的情况下。双方必须决定各自归谁所有。以下四个例子说明了其中的一些问题。

Even if one is not in a covenant marriage, divorce often presents serious difficulties, especially when a couple has joint property and children. The parties must decide who gets what. Some of the problems are demonstrated by the following four examples.

  1. 一位妻子供丈夫上学,而自己却没有继续深造。丈夫成为律师一年后,他们决定离婚。他们没有财产,也没有孩子。
  2. A wife has put her husband through school and has not furthered her own education. One year after he becomes a lawyer, they decide to get divorced. They have no property or children.
  3. 与(1)相同,只是妻子的上学是由丈夫完成的。
  4. The same as (1), only it is the husband who put the wife through school.
  5. 一对夫妻结婚六年后决定分手。他们育有两个孩子、一栋房子、一只狗,以及数不清的个人财产。两人都有自己的事业,但妻子的事业更成功,收入是丈夫的两倍。
  6. A couple decides to break up after six years of marriage. They have two children, a house, a dog, and innumerable items of personal property. Both have careers but the wife’s is more successful, and her income is twice that of her husband’s.
  7. 与(3)相同,只是这次房子是丈夫的父母送给她们的。
  8. The same as (3), only this time the husband’s parents have given them the house.

在这些例子中,就像在现实生活中一样,离婚双方彼此应承担哪些责任,这个问题没有简单的答案,夫妻之间往往最终对簿公堂。然而,一般情况下,双方都会被鼓励在庭前达成合理的和解。

In these examples, as in real life, there are no easy answers to what responsibilities two divorcing people have to each other, and couples often end up in court. Generally, however, both parties are encouraged to come to a reasonable pretrial settlement.

单打

Singles

选择不结婚的人数和大量的离婚催生了一个被称为“单身”的群体。这些人独自生活,或在单亲家庭中担任父母。作为一个群体,单身人士的数量在过去二十年里大幅增加。这个群体包括

The number of individuals choosing not to marry and the large number of divorces have created the class called singles. These people live alone or as a parent in a single-parent family. As a group, singles have increased substantially in the past twenty years. This group includes

表 9.1 从未结过婚的单身人士
  1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 2020
男士
    25至29岁 19.1% 33.1% 45.2% 49.1% 65% 70%
    30至34岁 9.4% 15.9% 27.0% 29.5% 39% 44%
女性
    25至29岁 10.5% 20.9% 31.1% 34.5% 53% 58%
    30至34岁 6.2% 9.5% 16.4% 20.6% 36% 41%
资料来源:美国人口普查局,《当前人口报告》。

离婚人士以及从未结过婚的人数也在不断增加。如表9.1所示,越来越多的人推迟结婚。随着单身人士数量的增长,为他们设计的活动也随之增加。单身健身俱乐部、单身俱乐部、单身酒吧和视频约会服务激增。

divorced people but also an increasing number of people who have never been married. As you can see in Table 9.1, more and more people are postponing marriage. As the number of singles has grown, so too has the number of activities designed for them. Health clubs for singles, singles clubs, singles bars, and video dating services have proliferated.

不仅单身人士数量显著增加,单亲家庭的数量也显著增加。1960年,美国单亲家庭约有200万个,而到了2020年代初,这一数字已增长到1360多万个,约占所有18岁以下子女家庭的34%。这些家庭大多以女性为户主。理论上,前夫或前夫父亲有义务帮助抚养子女,但实际上,许多人却逃避了这一责任。

Not only has there been a significant increase in the number of singles, but there has also been an important increase in the number of single-parent households. Whereas in 1960, there were approximately two million single-parent families, in the early 2020s that number had grown to more than 13.6 million, or about 34 percent of all families with children under age eighteen. Most of these are female-headed households. In theory, ex-husbands or fathers are required to help support their children, but in practice many shirk this responsibility.

共同生活

Living Together

20世纪70年代,统计学家记录到未婚同居人数急剧增加。这一趋势持续至今,2020年,在年轻群体中,未婚同居的人数甚至超过了已婚同居的人数。人们未婚同居的原因包括:不愿承诺建立任何形式的长期关系;希望在分手不可避免时避免法律纠纷;尝试新生活;以及一方或双方存在未解除的婚姻关系。尽管这种做法传统上不被接受,但如今已逐渐被人们接受,许多父母对待子女同居安排的态度,就像对待婚姻一样随意。

In the 1970s, statisticians documented a dramatic increase in the number of unmarried people living together. This trend has continued, and in 2020, the number of unmarried couples living together was greater than the number of married couples living together in younger age cohorts. Some of the reasons people live together without getting married are unwillingness to commit themselves to long-term relationships of any kind, desire to avoid legal complications when breakups they believe to be inevitable occur, experimentation, and the existence of an undissolved marriage of one or both partners. The practice, although traditionally frowned on, has gained acceptance, and many parents refer as casually to their childrens living-together arrangements as they do to marriages.

“我们一定是个好父母……我们的孩子都恨我们。”

“We must be great parents . . . our children all hate us."

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家庭的未来

The Future of the Family

家庭角色的转变给社会留下了许多难题。谁来引领子孙后代?谁将成为未来的父母?如何才能防止今天的家庭危机演变成明天的国家灾难?成年人能否在满足自身愿望的同时,生育出同样快乐、适应良好的后代,成为我们期望的下一代,成为称职的父母?妻子和丈夫能否在家庭、工作和闲暇时光中找到各自追求的满足感,将“单身幸福”带来的个人自由和成功与婚姻带来的情感安全感和承诺结合起来?

The changing role of the family has left society with hard questions. Who will guide future generations? Who will be tomorrows parents? What can prevent today’s family crisis from becoming tomorrow’s national disaster? Can adults please themselves as much as they hope to while producing equally happy, well-adjusted offspring who will be the solid citizen mothers and fathers we would wish for the next generation? Can both wife and husband find the satisfaction they seek at home, at work, and in their leisure hours, combining the goals of personal freedom and success associated with “single-blessedness” with the emotional security and commitments of wedlock?

许多个人和团体提出了他们认为有效的重振家庭活力的方法。他们提出的想法包括禁止堕胎、禁止校车接送、允许学校祈祷以及禁止学校进行性教育。我们不对这些问题表明立场,因此怀疑这些措施能否促进家庭的稳定,尽管出于其他原因,这些措施或许是可取的。社会在变化,社会中的机构也在变化。随着新技术的发展,最优的经济分工也随之变化,家庭的功能也随之变化。

Many individuals and groups have suggested what they believe to be effective ways to reinvigorate the family. Some of their ideas include outlawing abortion, banning busing, allowing school prayer, and prohibiting sex education in the schools. Without taking a stand on any of these issues, we doubt that they will contribute to the stability of families, although they may well be desirable for other reasons. Society changes and so too do the institutions in it. With new technologies, the optimal economic division of labor changes, and as it changes, so too do the functions of families.

家庭生存面临着严峻的挑战,这是现实。随着越来越多的女性从小就将高等教育和职业视为与生俱来的权利,婚姻将成为她们众多选择之一。许多夫妇受高离婚率的困扰,考虑到养育子女的高昂成本,有意选择不结婚,或者即使结婚也不生孩子。即使有了孩子,这些孩子也往往比过去更加独立。因此,这些孩子的价值观并非来自家庭,而是主要来自电影、电视、音乐、杂志、互联网和同龄人。

Serious challenges to the family’s survival are realities. With more women brought up to regard higher education and careers as their birthright, marriage will be only one of several paths they can choose. Many couples, deterred by high divorce rates, are deliberately opting not to marry or, if they do wed, not to have children, in view of the staggering costs of parenthood. When they do have children, those children often are left much more on their own than in the past. Consequently, rather than deriving their values from the family, these children acquire most of their values from films, television, music, magazines, the Internet, and peers.

为了让家庭适应新的现实,一些变化——例如灵活的工作时间、更多共同承担的工作、婴儿护理以及男女均可享受的家庭假——似乎有助于实现维系家庭团结的目标。家庭可能会随着社会趋势的变化而呈现新的形式;它可能会随着变革之风而改变。但就此断言家庭单位即将消亡似乎为时过早。

It seems likely that changes to adapt the family to the new realities—such as flexible working hours, more shared jobs, infant care, and familial leave for both sexes—will help achieve the goal of holding the family together. The family may take new forms as social trends demand; it may bend with the winds of change. But the diagnosis of the family unit’s imminent death seems premature.

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 家庭模式的四种变化由配偶数量、配偶选择、家庭控制和血统计算决定。
  • Four variations in family patterns are determined by the number of mates, selection of mates, family control, and reckoning of descent.
  • 家庭的三大功能是生物功能、心理功能和经济功能。
  • Three functions of the family are the biological function, the psychological function, and the economic function.
  • 家庭模式的演变是为了满足这些功能。
  • Family patterns evolve to meet these functions.
  • 当今的美国家庭与七十年前的家庭有很大不同。
  • The US family today is quite different from its counterpart of seventy years ago.
  • 对该家庭单位即将死亡的诊断为时过早。
  • The diagnosis of the family unit’s imminent death is premature.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 包办婚姻(157)
  • arranged marriage (157)
  • 群交(150)
  • cenogamy (150)
  • 契约婚姻(166)
  • covenant marriage (166)
  • 平等家庭 (152)
  • egalitarian family (152)
  • 家庭 (149)
  • family (149)
  • 婚姻(149)
  • marriage (149)
  • 母系社会(152)
  • matriarchy (152)
  • 母系制 (153)
  • matrilinear system (153)
  • 一夫一妻制(150)
  • monogamy (150)
  • 无过错离婚(166)
  • no-fault divorce (166)
  • 父权制(152)
  • patriarchy (152)
  • 父系制 (153)
  • patrilinear system (153)
  • 个人选择交配(152)
  • personal-choice mating (152)
  • 一妻多夫制(150)
  • polyandry (150)
  • 一夫多妻制(150)
  • polygamy (150)
  • 一夫多妻制(150)
  • polygyny (150)
  • 同性婚姻(150)
  • same-sex marriage (150)
  • 连续一夫一妻制(150)
  • serial monogamy (150)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 为什么家庭常常被视为所有社会单位中最重要的?
  2. Why is the family often regarded as the most important of all social units?
  3. 阐述选择伴侣时的一些重要考虑因素。
  4. State some important considerations in choosing a mate.
  5. 家庭控制的方法有哪些?
  6. What are some methods of family control?
  7. 为什么在单边体系下比在双边体系下更容易追溯你的血统?
  8. Why is it easier to trace your descent under a unilateral system than a bilateral system?
  9. 在当今环境下,家庭制度对于物种繁衍真的有必要吗?请陈述你的答案。
  10. In today’s circumstances, is the institution of the family really necessary for the propagation of the species? Defend your answer.
  11. 一夫一妻制是最普遍的婚姻形式。请解释一下其中的原因。
  12. Monogamy is the most widespread form of marriage. Give some reasons for this.
  13. 家庭的经济功能发生了哪些变化?它们是否比以前不那么重要了?为什么?
  14. What changes have the economic functions of the family undergone? Are they less important than formerly? Why or why not?
  15. 在过去几代人中,家庭的生理护理功能发生了哪些变化?它仍然重要吗?
  16. What changes has the physical-care function of the family undergone in the last few generations? Is it still important?
  17. 描述美国的约会习俗,并解释其目的。
  18. Describe the custom of dating as practiced in the United States, and explain the purpose it serves.
  19. 描述一些除夫妻儿女家庭之外的家庭类型。
  20. Describe some types of families other than the husband-wife-children household.
  21. 为爱情而结婚是否就不需要考虑兼容性以及经济和社会因素?
  22. Does marrying for love eliminate consideration of compatibility and economic and social factors?
  23. 你能想到新婚夫妇在生活方式上必须做出哪些重大调整吗?孩子的到来还需要他们做出哪些调整呢?
  24. Can you think of some major adjustments that a newly married couple must make in their way of life? What further adjustments would be required by the arrival of children?
  25. 孩子离家后,夫妻会面临哪些问题?
  26. What are some of the problems a married couple must meet after the children have left home?
  27. 哪些因素导致了高离婚率?
  28. What are some of the factors that have contributed to high divorce rates?
  29. 什么是无过错离婚?
  30. What is no-fault divorce?
  31. 单亲家庭的增加对社会有何影响?
  32. What implications does the increase in single-parent homes have for society?
  33. 如何减少家庭解体?通过完善婚姻法?通过提高离婚难度?还是通过其他方法?
  34. How can family disorganization be reduced? By better marriage laws? By making divorce more difficult? Or by other methods?
  35. 家庭是否还能保留其作为社会制度的现有重要性?为什么?能否找到令人满意的替代方案?
  36. Is the family likely to retain its present importance as a social institution? Why or why not? Could a satisfactory substitute be devised?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 请访问网站https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/family-tech/tech-effects-on-family/5ways-technology-has-negatively-affected-families.htm。科技对当今家庭影响最大的五种方式是什么?
  2. Go to the site https://electronics.howstuffworks.com/family-tech/tech-effects-on-family/5ways-technology-has-negatively-affected-families.htm. What are the top five ways that technology has affected families today?
  3. 请访问网站https://billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources/lessons-plans/landmark-supreme-court-cases-elessons/loving-vvir-ginia-1967/“异族通婚”是什么意思?最高法院何时对“洛文诉弗吉尼亚州案”作出判决?
  4. Go to the website https://billofrightsinstitute.org/educate/educator-resources/lessons-plans/landmark-supreme-court-cases-elessons/loving-vvir-ginia-1967/. What does miscegenation mean? When did the Supreme Court decide Loving v. Virginia?
  5. 请访问www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ5QuSoVJlU观看关于家谱和 DNA 的视频。家谱学家或对自身祖先感兴趣的人可以如何使用 DNA?DNA 可以用来识别特定的祖先,例如亚历山大大帝或成吉思汗吗?
  6. Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ5QuSoVJlU and watch the video on genealogy and DNA. How can DNA be used by genealogists or people interested in their own ancestry? Can DNA be used to identify specific ancestors like Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan?
  7. 请访问http://gaymarriage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006193 。奥贝格费尔诉霍奇斯案的投票结果如何?哪些法官支持哪些立场?
  8. Go tohttp://gaymarriage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006193. What was the vote on the Obergefell v. Hodges case? Which justices supported which position?
  9. 摘自www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/17/1-theamerican-family-today/,2014年有多少比例的儿童与单亲父母一起生活?(仅供参考:答案是 26%)。
  10. From www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/12/17/1-theamerican-family-today/, whatpercentageofchildren lived with a single parent in 2014? (For reference only: answer 26 percent.)

进一步研究

For Further Study

  • 安萨里、阿齐兹和埃里克·克林伯格,《现代浪漫》,纽约:企鹅出版社,2015 年。
  • Ansari, Aziz, and Eric Klinenberg, Modern Romance, New York: Penguin, 2015.
  • Ball, Carlos A.,《同性婚姻与孩子:历史、社会科学与法律的故事》,牛津:牛津大学出版社,2015 年。
  • Ball, Carlos A., Same-Sex Marriage and Children: A Tale of History, Social Science and Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
  • 康利,道尔顿,《啄食顺序:哪些兄弟姐妹会成功以及原因》纽约:万神殿,2004 年
  • Conley, Dalton, The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why, New York: Pantheon, 2004.
  • Coontz,Stephanie,《私人生活的社会起源:1600-1900 年美国家庭史》,纽约:Verso,2016 年。
  • Coontz, Stephanie, The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, 1600-1900, New York: Verso, 2016.
  • 德·马奈夫,达芙妮,《母性欲望:论孩子、爱和内心生活》,伦敦:小布朗,2004 年。
  • de Marneffe, Daphne, Maternal Desire: On Children, Love, and the Inner Life, London: Little Brown, 2004.
  • 戈特曼,约翰·M.和南·西尔弗,《让婚姻成功的七个原则》,纽约:和谐图书,2015 年。
  • Gottman, John M., and Nan Silver, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, New York: Harmony Books, 2015.
  • 哈珀,莎拉​​,《老龄化社会:神话、挑战和机遇伦敦:霍德阿诺德,2006 年。
  • Harper, Sarah, Aging Societies: Myths, Challenges and Opportunities, London: Hodder Arnold, 2006.
  • McClain, Linda C.,《家庭的地位:培养能力平等和责任》马萨诸塞州剑桥:哈佛大学出版社,2006 年。
  • McClain, Linda C., The Place of Families: Fostering Capacity, Equality, and Responsibility, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
  • 莫伊尼汉,丹尼尔·帕特里克,《家庭与国家》,纽约:Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1986 年。
  • Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, Family and Nation, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.
  • 奥巴马,米歇尔,《成为》纽约:皇冠出版社。2018 年。
  • Obama, Michelle, Becoming, New York: Crown. 2018.
  • 佩雷尔,埃丝特,《囚禁中的交配:调和情色与家庭》,纽约:哈珀柯林斯出版社,2006 年。
  • Perel, Esther, Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic, New York: Harper Collins, 2006.
  • Ryan, Christopher 和 Cacilda Jetha,《黎明时的性爱:我们如何交配为何出轨,以及它对现代关系的意义》纽约:哈珀柯林斯出版社,2010 年。
  • Ryan, Christopher, and Cacilda Jetha, Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, New York: Harper Collins, 2010.
  • 萨菲娜,卡尔,《变得野性:动物文化如何养育家庭创造美丽和实现和平》纽约:霍尔特,2020 年。
  • Safina, Carl, Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace, New York: Holt, 2020.
  • 斯坦利,罗莎琳德·考德威尔,《家庭生活:彻底改变家庭生活和爱情的方式》,Create Space 独立出版平台,2015 年。
  • Stanley, Rosalind Caldwell, Family Life: Revolutionizing the Way Families Live and Love, Create Space Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.
  • Ugwueze,Uche Lynn-Teresa,通过非洲文化价值观和结构重新构想非裔美国家庭,印第安纳州布卢明顿:AuthorHouse,2014 年,
  • Ugwueze, Uche Lynn-Teresa, Reimagining the African American Family through African Cultural Values and Structures, Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2014,
  • Vance,JD,《乡下人的悲歌:一个家庭与文化危机回忆录》,纽约:哈珀柯林斯出版社,2016 年。
  • Vance, J.D., Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, New York: Harper Collins, 2016.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第十 宗教

chapter 10 Religion

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-10

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-10

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 解释为什么宗教存在于所有社会
  • Explain why religion has existed in all societies
  • 列出当今五大宗教并总结其信仰
  • List the five great religions of today and summarize their beliefs
  • 阐述原教旨主义宗教观点给国家带来的问题
  • State the problem that fundamentalist religious views pose for the state
  • 讨论宗教在社会中的作用
  • Discuss the role of religion in society

从公元1095年到1272年,欧洲人发动战争,从穆斯林手中夺回了传统上由基督徒控制的领土。这些战争被称为十字军东征,它改变了社会的本质。正如当今全球恐怖主义和中东战乱等问题所证明的那样,宗教仍在引发战争,仍在改变社会的本质。宗教对社会的重要性无论怎样强调都不为过。

From ad 1095 to 1272, Europeans went to war to recapture territory, which had traditionally been controlled by Christians, from the Muslims. The Crusades, as those wars were called, changed the nature of society. As evidenced in today's problems of worldwide terrorism and fighting in the Middle East, religion is still leading to wars and still changing the nature of society. The importance of religion to society cannot be overemphasized.

如果我们认为宗教涵盖所有对超自然力量的信仰,认为超自然力量掌控着人们的生活,并包含各种类型的神灵和精灵,那么宗教很可能起源于一些最早的人类社会。考古学家和人类学家的发现表明,自古以来,人类就一直在寻求对其存在和自然现象的解释,而这些解释超出了他们从日常生活经验或对自然世界的观察所能获得的范围。

If we think of religion as including all beliefs in supernatural powers, conceived of as controlling peoples lives, and including various types of spirits and gods, then religion probably had its beginnings in some of the earliest human societies. The findings of archaeologists and anthropologists suggest that from time immemorial humans have sought explanations of their existence and of natural phenomena that went beyond the range of what they could learn from the ordinary experiences of life or from observation of the natural world.

生命中一个从很早开始就困扰人们的方面是死亡的必然性,而宗教常常承诺人们死后会有新的生命。此外,随着文化和文明的发展,人们渴望找到超越日常生活需求和欲望的人生目标和满足感,从而赋予人类生存更大的尊严和意义。宗教有助于满足这种渴望,因为它的所有形式都包含着共同的概念:融入道德准则;运用神话或故事;组织知识学说;通过仪式展现和慰藉;培养社群和对他人的尊重;以及对某种强烈而个人体验的期盼,例如祈祷的应允。

An aspect of life that from very early on troubled people was the inevitability of death, and religion often promised them a life beyond death. Also, as cultures and civilizations developed, people longed to find purposes and satisfactions in life that would transcend the needs and desires of everyday living and thus give human existence greater dignity and meaning. Religion helps satisfy this longing because of the concepts common to all of its forms: the incorporation of a code of ethics; the use of myths or stories; the organization of intellectual doctrine; the display and comfort of ritual; the fostering of community and regard for others; and the hope of some intense, personal experience such as the answering of prayer.

毋庸置疑,宗教信仰、制度和仪式一直是大多数社会文化模式的重要组成部分。即使在现代工业社会,我们许多最古老的价值观和传统也根植于宗教。在我们国家,宗教影响的证据比比皆是。这包括数百万参加宗教仪式的民众;成千上万的礼拜场所;圣诞节、复活节、逾越节、赎罪日和斋月等节日(圣日)的庆祝活动;以及婚礼和葬礼等私人和官方仪式,以及洗礼和成人礼等仪式。

That religious beliefs, institutions, and rituals have been a major element in the cultural patterns of most societies cannot be doubted. Even in modern industrial societies many of our oldest values and traditions are rooted in religion. In our own country, evidence of religious influence is rich. It includes the millions of people who attend religious services; the thousands of houses of worship; the celebration of holidays (holy days) such as those associated with Christmas, Easter, Passover, Yom Kippur, and Ramadan; and those ceremonies that are both private and official, such as weddings and funerals, and rites such as baptisms and bar mitzvahs.

本章的目的并非要阐明任何特定信仰教义的真伪。我们的目的在于:

In this chapter, our purpose is not to show the truth or falsehood of the doctrines of any particular faith. Rather, it is:

  • 描述宗教的本质以及过去和现在某些主要宗教的总体特征。
  • To describe the nature of religion and the general character of certain major religions of the past and present.
  • 关注宗教在人类社会发展中所发挥的作用,它不仅整合和稳定了人类社会,而且有时也引发了冲突。
  • To give some attention to the role that religion has played in the development of human societies, not only to integrate and stabilize them but also, at times, to create conflicts.
  • 考虑当今社会变革对宗教的影响,反之,考虑宗教对社会变革的影响。
  • To consider the present-day influence of social change on religion and, conversely, the influence of religion on social change.

宗教的本质

The Nature of Religion

如今,当我们说一个人有宗教信仰时,通常是指他或她相信至高无上的神灵的存在,并且这种信仰在很大程度上决定了道德戒律和行为。宗教人士相信某些事物具有极大的价值或神圣性,他们很可能属于某个宗教组织,例如教堂或犹太教堂;至少,他们会参加宗教仪式,即使是偶尔或偶尔,在那里他们会与信仰相近的人交流。

Today, when we say that a person is religious, we usually mean he or she believes in the existence of a supreme being and that this belief determines moral precepts and behavior to an important degree. Religious people believe that some things are of great value, or sacred, and they are likely to belong to a religious organization such as a church or synagogue; at the least, they attend religious services, even if on a sporadic or occasional schedule, where they commune with others whose beliefs are similar.

宗教种类繁多。大多数宗教都包含对上帝或诸神的信仰、某种来世观念以及某种救赎理论,即通过获得进入天堂的权利或转世为更高级生命形式或更高社会地位的特权来获得救赎。但有些宗教似乎没有我们通常所理解的上帝。原始佛教就是其中之一。与该信仰的一些后期形式不同,它是一种没有神祇、没有人格化的上帝概念、也没有任何救赎理论的宗教,只主张通过达到涅槃(一种所有欲望甚至所有意识都消失的状态)来摆脱无休止的轮回和苦难。

Religions vary greatly. Most include a belief in God or gods, some concept of an afterlife, and some theory of salvation, either by earning the right of entry into heaven or the privilege of reincarnation in a higher form of life or a higher social status. But some religions seem to have no God in any sense in which we ordinarily use that term. One of these is original Buddhism, which, unlike some later forms of this faith, is a religion without a deity, without a personal concept of God, and without any theory of salvation except the bliss of escaping perpetual rounds of reincarnation and suffering by achieving nirvana, a state in which all desire and even all consciousness is lost.

宗教可以兼具精神层面和世俗层面。“世俗宗教”一词最早由卢梭使用,指的是引导人们遵守国家法律的宗教信仰。它是一种激励人们出于对神权的敬畏而“心甘情愿地服从政府法律”的手段。这与精神层面的宗教形成对比,精神层面的宗教只关注天上的事情,对世间发生的一切漠不关心。世俗宗教和精神层面的宗教都不会对国家构成威胁。然而,当宗教的这两种元素结合在一起,精神层面的宗教开始关注世间发生的一切,而不愿接受国家法律时,国家与宗教之间就会发生冲突。宗教的原教旨主义元素,例如基督教原教旨主义和伊斯兰教原教旨主义,经常将两者结合起来,从而与国家发生冲突。个人不再心甘情愿地服从政府法律;相反,他或她常常与这些法律直接冲突。有时,这种冲突会演变成暴力冲突。我们可以从基督教原教旨主义者对堕胎中心的袭击和伊斯兰教原教旨主义者对西方目标的袭击中看到这一点。

Religions can have both spiritual and civil elements. Civil religion, a term that was first used by Rousseau, refers to religious beliefs that lead people to want to live by the laws of the land. It is a means of motivating people, out of fear of the divine power over them, to “subject themselves willingly to the governmental laws.” This is in contrast to spiritual religion, which is only concerned with heavenly things and cares little what happens in this world. Neither civil nor spiritual religions are a threat to the state. However, when the two elements of religion combine, and the spiritual aspect of religion becomes interested in the happenings of the world and unwilling to accept the laws of the land, the state and religion can come into conflict. Fundamentalist elements of religions, such as fundamentalist Christianity and fundamentalist Islam, often combine the two and hence come into conflict with the state. No longer does the individual subject himself or herself willingly to government laws; instead he or she is often in direct conflict with those laws. Sometimes this conflict becomes violent. We can see this in both fundamentalist Christian attacks on abortion centers and fundamentalist Islamic attacks on Western targets.

所有宗教都基于信仰。© Borislav Marinic/Alamy Stock Vector

All religions are based on faith. © Borislav Marinic/Alamy Stock Vector

要给宗教下一个完全令人满意的正式定义并非易事,但汉斯-约阿希姆·绍普斯在《人类的宗教》一书中提出的定义颇为实用,我们将沿用这一定义。他认为:“广义上,宗教可以定义为人与他所信仰并感到依赖的超人力量之间的关系。” 这种关系以多种方式表达,包括信任或恐惧、传说、神话、祈祷、仪式,以及将宗教戒律应用于生活。

It is not easy to give a formal definition of religion that is wholly satisfactory, but the one suggested by Hans-Joachim Schoeps in the Religions of Mankind is useful and is the one we will use. According to him, “religion may be defined, in its broadest sense, as the relationship between man and the superhuman power he believes in and feels himself to be dependent upon.” Such a relationship is expressed in various ways, including feelings of trust or fear, legends, myths, prayer, rituals, and the application of religious precepts to the conduct of life.

最早的人类信奉什么宗教,这仍是一个值得推测的问题,但当今有些部落群体,比如非洲丛林人,他们的生活方式直到最近才与现代科技相距甚远,以至于人们很容易将他们的信仰比作史前信仰。经典电影《上帝也疯狂》中有一个生动的例子。在这部电影的前十五分钟,卡拉哈里丛林人过着一种我们觉得几千年来一定没有改变的生活。突然,一架飞过的飞机把一个可乐瓶扔了出去,落在他们中间。丛林人把瓶子视为神的礼物,但它带来了变化,包括对信仰的考验,而信仰的考验本身就是对原始人类精神想象力的赞美。最终,丛林人决定摆脱这种“新技术”,以保存他们的生活方式。

What religions the earliest human beings practiced is a matter for speculation, but there are some tribal groups today, such as African bushmen, whose way of life is, or has been until very recently, so removed from modern technology that it is tempting to liken their beliefs to prehistoric ones. A graphic example can be seen in the classic film The Gods Must Be Crazy. In the first fifteen minutes of this film, Kalahari bushmen are seen living a life that we feel must have been unchanged for thousands of years. Suddenly, a Coke bottle is tossed out of a plane passing overhead and lands among them. The bushmen view the bottle as a gift from the gods, but it causes changes, including tests of faith, which themselves celebrate the imagination of the primal human spirit. Ultimately, the bushmen decide they want to get rid of this “new technology” in order to preserve their way of life.

碑文表达了许多不同宗教的观点

The inscription expresses the views of many different The Great Sphinx and the Pyramid of Khafra. religions.

当今的伟大宗教

The Great Religions of Today

今天,有无数的宗教和教派,包括仍然生活在部落群体中的人们的宗教。但是,如果我们要列出世界上的主要宗教,每个宗教仍然是数百万人生活中的重要力量,我们应该至少包括五种,即印度教,佛教,犹太教,基督教和伊斯兰教。在世界上,大约 70% 的人口认同某个有组织的宗教团体,尽管许多人只是松散地加入。在美国,新教徒和天主教徒是最大的群体,如图10.1a所示。基督教也是世界上最大的宗教,如图 10.1b 所示。然而,与美国不同的是,世界上比例最大的基督徒是罗马天主教徒而不是新教徒。穆斯林和印度教徒是世界上接下来的两个最大的宗教团体。如果我们回顾世界宗教信仰的演变历程,就会发现自1950年以来,最大的变化是佛教的重要性下降。这在很大程度上是由于20世纪50年代共产党执政后中国宗教的衰落。

Today there are innumerable religions and sects, including the religions of people who still live in tribal groups. But if we are to list the great religions of the world, each of which is still a vital force in the lives of many millions of human beings, we should include at least five, namely, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the world, about 70 percent of the population identifies itself with some organized religious group, although many people are only loosely affiliated. In the United States, Protestant or Catholic Christians are the largest groups, as you can see in Figure 10.1a. Tire Christian religion is also the largest in the world, as you can see in Figure 10.1b. Unlike in the United States, however, the largest percentage of Christians in the world is Roman Catholic rather than Protestant. Muslims and Hindus are the next two largest religious groups in the world. Were we to look at world religious affiliation over time, we would see that since 1950 the largest change has been the decreased importance of Buddhism. In large part, this decrease is due to the decline in religion in China after the communists took control in the 1950s.

图 10.1 中的百分比涵盖不同的宗教信仰。许多人信仰宗教,但不参加礼拜。如果我们将那些信仰宗教但每年参加礼拜不超过一次的人也算上,那么美国被归类为“无宗教信仰”的人数将上升到 50% 以上,这比过去几十年大幅增长。

The percentages in Tigure 10.1 are of different affiliations. Many people are affiliated with a religion but do not attend services. If we include people who, while affiliated with a religion, do not attend services more than once a year, the total number of people in the United States classified in the “none” category would rise to more than 50 percent, which is a substantial rise over past decades.

中国的儒教和道教以及日本的神道教是否应该被纳入当今的伟大宗教,尚有争议。自现政权以来,中国古代宗教的地位和未来都充满不确定性。此外,儒教常被认为更像是一种哲学而非宗教。神道教是日本的古老宗教,但一直面临着来自佛教的激烈竞争。1868年,经过改革的神道教成为日本的官方宗教,但二战后,日本宣布了宗教自由。然而,一些人估计,数百万日本人仍然信仰神道教。它是自然、祖先和……的融合。天皇崇拜与日本民族主义密切相关,尽管天皇的神圣概念已于 1945 年被正式废除。

Whether Confucianism and Taoism in China and Shintoism in Japan should be included in the great religions of today is questionable. Since the current regime, the status and future of China’s ancient religions are uncertain. Furthermore, Confucianism often is said to be more a philosophy than a religion. Shintoism is the ancient religion of Japan but has had strong competition from Buddhism. In 1868 reformed Shintoism was made the official religion of Japan, but after World War II religious freedom was declared. However, some calculate that millions of Japanese still retain their faith in Shintoism. It is a mixture of nature, ancestor, and emperor worship and is closely associated with Japanese nationalism, although the concept of the emperors divinity was officially abolished in 1945.

图 10.1(a)美国人口的宗教认同;(b)世界人口的宗教认同(来源:© 皮尤研究中心)

Figure 10.1(a) Religious identification of US population; (b) religious identification of world population. (Source: © Pew Research Center)

印度教

Hinduism

印度教是印度教徒的宗教和社会制度,印度教徒大多生活在印度。自古以来,印度教在印度一直根深蒂固,至今仍主导着大多数印度人民的生活。少数印度人皈依了基督教或伊斯兰教等外来信仰,或皈依了佛教、耆那教或锡克教等宗教,而这三种宗教都源于印度教本身。

Hinduism is the religion and social system of the Hindus, the majority of whom live in India. Since ancient times, it has had a strong hold in India, and even today it dominates the lives of the majority of its people. A minority of Indians have been converted to foreign faiths such as Christianity or Islam, or to religions such as Buddhism, Jainism, or Sikhism, all three of which developed out of Hinduism itself.

湿婆,印度教神海伦·瑞夫提供

Shiva, a Hindu god. Courtesy of Helen Reiff

与许多宗教不同,印度教没有创始人,没有明确的信条,尽管它有许多明确的救赎之路,却没有一条独一无二。印度教认为灵魂在宇宙之旅中寄宿于连续的躯体中,因此所有生命,包括昆虫和植物,都有灵魂。万物,即使是神灵,都必须死而复生,循环往复。有些人认为,通过苦行可以摆脱这种循环,在苦行中,信徒会丧失人格,与绝对神合一。尽管印度教自称是一神教,但它的至高神却有多种化身,其中最著名的两个是创造者和守护神毗湿奴,以及毁灭之神湿婆。此外,还有成千上万个次要的神。没有人会试图记住所有神,但每个神在民间都有其独特的地位;信徒会告诉你:“他们都是同一个神。”

Unlike many religions, Hinduism has no founder, no distinct set of creeds, and, although it has many clear-cut paths to salvation, no unique path. It holds that the soul inhabits successive bodies in its journey through the universe, and thus all life, including insect and plant life, has a soul. All beings, even the gods, must die and be reborn in an endless cycle. Some believe that this cycle can be escaped through asceticism, in which personality is lost and the believer becomes one with the Absolute. Although Hinduism claims to be monotheistic, its High God has many forms, of which the two best known are Vishnu the creator and preserver and Shiva the destroyer. There are thousands of lesser gods. No one attempts to remember all of them, but each has its place in folk affection; the believer will tell you, “They are all the same god.”

在印度教中,所有生命都是神圣的,因为所有生命都有灵魂。献祭生物是一些印度教仪式的特色,其解释恰恰在于:正因为生命神圣,所以将生命献给神灵意义非凡。然而,如今,部分由于动物的经济价值,祭品几乎总是以鲜花和食物来代表。(神灵享用食物的精神部分;物质部分则由供奉者享用。)许多动物都是神圣的:牛受到崇敬,因为它代表着大地母亲。它绝不能受到伤害或宰杀。(病弱饥饿的牛在乡间和拥挤的城市中游荡。)街道;众所周知,他们会去加尔各答看电影。)其他神圣的创造物有猴子、蛇、榕树、罗勒草本植物、所有的山脉和河流,以及形状奇特的岩石。

In Hinduism all life is sacred because all life has a soul. The sacrifice of living creatures, a characteristic of some Hindu ceremonies, is explained by precisely this: Because life is sacred, its sacrifice to the gods is vitally meaningful. Today, however, partly because of the economic value of animals, sacrifices are almost always represented by flowers and food. (The gods eat the spiritual portion of the food; the material portion is consumed by the givers.) Many animals are sacred: The cow is revered because she represents Mother Earth. She is never to be injured or killed. (Sick and starving cows roam the countryside and crowded city streets; they have been known to attend the movies in Calcutta.) Other sacred creations are monkeys, snakes, the banyan tree, the herb known as basil, all mountains and rivers, and rocks of unusual shape.

印度教徒分为四个种姓:(1)学者和祭司(婆罗门,意为“生命之源”或“扩张力量”);(2)国家行政人员;(3)商业和农业企业家;(4)从事高三个种姓所不从事的工作的工人,例如扫地、打扫浴室和修鞋。这种种姓制度是世袭的,在这种制度下,个人可以从事的工作是有区别的。尽管几十年来,这种制度已被官方取缔,但事实证明,它几乎不可能根除,而要转入更高的种姓则非常困难。

Hindus are divided into four castes: (1) scholars and priests (Brahmans, a word meaning “source of life,” or “expansive force”); (2) administrators of the state; (3) commercial and agricultural entrepreneurs; and (4) workers who perform the tasks the three higher classes shun— for example, sweeping floors, cleaning bathrooms, and repairing shoes. This caste system, in which individuals are differentiated in the jobs they can have, is hereditary, and although it has been officially outlawed for decades, it has proved almost impossible to eradicate, and to transfer to a higher caste is very difficult.

印度教徒有数百种,其中锡克教徒是现代世界最重要的教徒之一。“Sikh”一词源于印地语,意为“门徒”,锡克教徒是一群古鲁的信徒,而这些古鲁的教义最容易通过列举他们所反对的原则来表达:种姓制度、祭司等级制度和仪式以及偶像崇拜。锡克教徒是熟练的农民和精明的商人,他们被认为是世界上最优秀的士兵之一。他们信奉印度教的信仰,例如出生、重生和灵魂轮回。在印度,锡克教徒和主流印度教的信徒之间存在着强烈的宗教仇恨,而政治和地区竞争加剧了这种敌意。 1984年,印度总理英迪拉·甘地下令对锡克教圣寺阿姆利则发动军事攻击(导致众多锡克教徒死亡,寺庙严重受损),随后她在自己的官邸内遭暗杀;人们普遍认为锡克教徒应对此负责。自此以后,印度旁遮普地区局势持续紧张,而该地区是锡克教徒聚居的地区。

There are hundreds of kinds of Hindus, ofwhich the Sikhs form one of the most important in the modern world. Sikh is derived from a Hindi word meaning “disciple,” and Sikhs are disciples of a group of gurus whose tenets are most easily expressed by naming principles to which they are opposed: the caste system, the priestly hierarchy and ritual, and idolatry Sikhs are skilled farmers and shrewd businesspeople, and they are considered among the world's finest soldiers. They subscribe to such Hindu beliefs as birth and rebirth and the transmigration of the soul. In India, intense religious hatred exists between Sikhs and followers of the dominant Hinduism, and this enmity is fortified by political and regional rivalries. In 1984, after the Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had ordered a military attack on the sacred Sikh temple of Amritsar (which resulted in many Sikh deaths and great damage to the edifice), she was assassinated on the grounds of her official residence; Sikhs are widely believed to have been responsible. Since then there has been ongoing tension in the Punjab region of India, where the majority of Sikhs reside.

印度教的一个外在特征是其专注于计数和分类,并创建类别以适应个体的个体表现。这通常被解释为一种在复杂世界中强加秩序的方法,但它也可以被视为一种强加混乱的手段,或通过无休止的努力来证明世界无法被归类。这一特性使得印度教能够将各种不同的、甚至相互矛盾的原则融入其中,只要印度教徒认为它们是正确的。

An outward sign of Hinduism is its concentration on counting and classifying, creating categories into which to fit individual manifestations. This usually is explained as a method of imposing order on a complicated world, but it can also be seen as a means of imposing disorder, or of proving, by the endlessness of the effort, that the world cannot be categorized. This characteristic enables Hinduism to incorporate diverse and even contradictory principles if Hindus find them good.

佛教

Buddhism

尽管由于本节所述的原因,佛教如今在印度已不多见,但在东方世界依然举足轻重。佛教主张信徒通过正思惟和克己修行,可证得涅槃。佛教源于早期印度教,其主要目标之一是将人们从印度教教义中无休止的轮回中解脱出来。佛教由一位年轻的尼泊尔王子释迦牟尼·乔达摩(Shakyamuni Gautama)于公元前500多年创立,他后来被称为佛陀(“觉者”)。他有时也被称为悉达多(Siddhartha),意为“圆满者”或“完满者”。在观察到父亲臣民的种种苦恼后,这位王子确信,人生百态,唯有克服对生命和享乐的渴望,才能获得解脱。因此,他离开父母,告别王室生活,成为一名云游苦行僧,以寻求解脱苦难的方法。

Although Buddhism, for the reasons outlined in this section, is now rare in India, it remains important in the Eastern world. It teaches that by right thinking and self-denial its followers can achieve nirvana. It developed out of early Hinduism, and one of its chief objectives is to free people from the endless cycle of reincarnations that is part of Hindu doctrine. Buddhism was founded more than 500 years before Christ by a young Nepalese prince, Shakyamuni Gautama, who later became known as Buddha (“the enlightened one”). He is also sometimes called Siddhartha, “the perfected” or “completed one.” After observing the troubles of his fathers subjects, the prince became convinced that all life results in suffering and that the only escape is to overcome desire for life and its pleasures. Therefore, he left his parents and his princely existence and became a wandering ascetic monk in order to seek a cure for suffering.

佛陀,在远东地区备受尊崇。图片由海伦·雷夫提供

Buddha, revered in the Far East. Courtesy of Helen Reiff

他成功进入了恍惚状态,记起了前世的化身,并认为自己已经经历了许多阶段,准备投生到现在的境界去向他人布道。乔达摩由此达到了开悟,可以被称为佛陀。尽管受到邪恶力量的诱惑,他仍然停留在这种沉思或涅槃的状态中,但他还是从中解脱出来,前往印度恒河畔的贝拿勒斯,向他人解释如何获得涅槃——即认识到生命就是苦难,苦难源于对物质和精神财富的强烈渴望,当渴望被摒弃时,苦难就会停止,我们通过经历八个阶段:正见、正思惟、正语、正业、正命、正精进、正念、正思维。

He succeeded in entering a trance in which he remembered his former incarnations and perceived himself as having already passed through so many stages that he was ready to have himself born to his current circumstances in order to preach to others. Gautama had thus reached Enlightenment and could be called Buddha. He emerged from this state of contemplation, or nirvana, although tempted by evil forces to remain dallying there, and went to Banaras, on the Ganges River in India, to explain how others could attain nirvana—namely, by realizing that life is suffering, suffering springs from a burning thirst for material and spiritual riches, suffering ceases when the thirst is renounced, and we cease to thirst by passing through eight stages: right views, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right contemplation.

所有这些概念都可以,也一直被划分成各自的子类别,但佛陀教义的核心是温柔、慈悲、理性和适度。每个人都可以成佛,尽管真正成佛的人很少。菩萨的数量比佛更多他们放弃或推迟进入涅槃,以便留下来帮助他人。佛陀的教诲并不涉及对更高生命的诉求,因为他亲身经历了普遍的苦难,使他无法相信仁慈的造物主。他的教诲涉及沉思和放下;在更高境界中,人们会领悟“一无所有”。

All of these concepts can be, and have been, divided into their own subcategories, but the heart of Buddha's teaching is gentleness, compassion, rationality, and moderation. Everyone can become a Buddha, although very few actually do so. More numerous than Buddhas are bodhisattvas, people who have given up or delayed entering nirvana in order that they may stay to help others. The Buddha’s preaching did not involve appeals to a higher being, because his experience of widespread suffering rendered him incapable of believing in a beneficent creator. It did involve contemplation and relinquishing; in an advanced state, one realizes “There is nothing.”

佛陀的诞生地(迦毗罗卫城)、觉悟之地(菩提伽耶)、首次布道之地(鹿野苑)以及圆寂之地(迦毗罗卫城附近)——均位于印度或尼泊尔——如今是佛教徒朝圣的主要目的地。尽管如此,佛教如今并非印度的主要宗教之一,其衰落有许多原因,但最主要的原因是伊斯兰教在哲学和物质上都超越了佛教,并且在公元 11 世纪,穆斯林摧毁了佛教寺院并驱逐了僧侣。

The Buddha’s birthplace (Kapilavastu), the place of his Enlightenment (Bodh Gaya), the place where he gave his first sermon (the deer park in Sarnath), and the place where he died (near Kapilavastu)—all in India or Nepal—are today the main destinations for Buddhist pilgrimages, Nevertheless, Buddhism is not one of the major religions of India today, having declined for many reasons, but principally because Islam overtook it both philosophically and materially, and in the eleventh century ad Muslims destroyed the Buddhist monasteries and dispersed the monks.

几个世纪以来,随着佛教信徒的增多和传播到其他国家,它经历了许多变化,其中一些变化极大地提升了它的吸引力。此外,各种教派也发展起来。它传播到西藏、中国、韩国、日本、东南亚和斯里兰卡,并在不同地区呈现出截然不同的形式。在南亚,例如斯里兰卡、缅甸和泰国等国家,佛教根深蒂固,据说比其他地区保留了更多其原始特征。

Over the centuries, as Buddhism gained converts and spread to other countries, it underwent many changes, some of which greatly increased its popular appeal. Also, a variety of sects developed. It spread to Tibet, China, Korea, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Sri Lanka, taking on markedly different forms in different areas. In the south of Asia, in countries such as Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Thailand, Buddhism is firmly established and is said to have retained more of its original character than in other regions.

虽然佛教主要是一种亚洲宗教,但在20世纪70年代,一些小型佛教教派在美国兴起。其中许多教派在20世纪80年代末解散,但仍有少数仍然存在。佛教寺院团体由佛陀亲自创立,其组织和特征据说是佛教中几个世纪以来变化相对较小的一个元素。即使到了今天,佛教僧侣仍然剃度着头,穿着传统的黄色袈裟。禅宗、超觉静坐和瑜伽等所有每天只需几个小时修行的佛教修行也仍在传播。

Although Buddhism is primarily an Asian religion, in the 1970s small Buddhist sects sprang up in the United States, Many of these sects disbanded in the late 1980s, but a few remain. The Buddhist monastic community was founded by the Buddha himself, and its organization and character are said to be the one element in Buddhism that has changed relatively little over the centuries. Even to this day, Buddhist monks shave their heads and wear the traditional yellow robes, Zen Buddhism, transcendental meditation, and yoga, all Buddhist practices that do not require more than several hours of practice a day, have also spread.

犹太教

Judaism

现在我们来谈谈三大一神教(只有一个神的宗教)——犹太教、基督教和伊斯兰教——它们有着共同的历史。首先是犹太教,尽管它在世界历史上发挥了重要作用,但其信徒数量相对较少。2020年,全球犹太人口总数可能只有约1500万,而基督徒和穆斯林人口则分别约为24亿和19亿。

We now turn to the three major monotheistic religions (religions with one god)—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—which all share a common history. We begin with Judaism, which, although it has played an important role in world history, has a relatively small number of adherents. In 2020, the entire Jewish population of the world was probably only about fifteen million, compared with about 2.4 billion Christians and 1.9 billion Muslims.

犹太教源于古希伯来部落的宗教。根据圣经记载,该部落的伟大领袖亚伯拉罕信奉一位神,指引他和他的族人迁徙。在漂泊期间,希伯来人,或称以色列人(以亚伯拉罕的孙子雅各或以色列命名),为了逃避饥荒,迁入了肥沃的尼罗河三角洲。最终,他们在那里被埃及人奴役。

Judaism developed out of the religion of the ancient Hebrew tribe. According to the Bible story, a great leader of this tribe, Abraham, put his trust in a single God to guide him and his people in their migrations. During their wanderings, the Hebrews, or Israelites, as they came to be called (after Jacob, or Israel, the grandson of Abraham), moved into the fertile Nile delta to escape famine. There they were eventually enslaved by the Egyptians.

在以色列人被奴役的时期,大概在公元前 1450 年至公元前 1400 年之间,出现了一位伟大的领袖,摩西。他按照上帝的指引,带领以色列人走向自由,并被普遍认为是犹太教的真正创始人。以色列人逃出埃及后,摩西登上西奈山,上帝在那里向他显现,并通过他与当时的以色列十二支派立下神圣的圣约。该约要求以色列人承认“以色列的上帝”是世界的统治者和天地的创造者。作为回报,上帝承认以色列人是他的选民。摩西受上帝指示称他为雅威,或有时翻译为耶和华。摩西下山时,带着两块石版,上面刻着雅威的十诫。这些后来被扩充为《托拉》——摩西五经——中规定的许多诫命和禁令,它既是犹太教经文的一部分,也是基督教旧约的一部分。

During the period of their slavery, probably sometime between 1450 bc and 1400 bc, there arose a great leader, Moses. He led the Israelites to freedom, as God had directed him, and came to be commonly regarded as the real founder of Judaism. After the escape of the Israelites from Egypt, Moses ascended Mount Sinai, where God appeared to him and through him made a sacred covenant with what were by then the twelve tribes of Israel. That covenant required that the Israelites acknowledge “the God of Israel” as ruler of the world and creator of heaven and earth. In return, God recognized the people of Israel as his chosen followers. Moses had been instructed by God to call him Yahweh, or as it is sometimes translated, Jehovah. When Moses came down from the mountain, he brought with him two stone tablets on which were inscribed Yahweh’s Ten Commandments. These were later amplified into the many commandments and prohibitions set forth in the Torah—the Pentateuch, or the Five Books of Moses—which is part of both Jewish scriptures and the Christian Old Testament.

犹太教有几个独特的特点。首先,尽管它声称具有普世性,但它过去和现在主要都是一群人(这些人可以有条件地将自己视为古代以色列人的后裔)的宗教。犹太人相信他们是被上帝选中的,但他们并不认为被上帝选中使他们变得特殊。他们他们不明白自己为何被选中,这既是一份祝福,也是一份负担。事实上,在《出埃及记》中,上帝曾建议摩西,或许他应该从一个不那么好斗的部落重新开始。犹太神学家认为,上帝选择犹太人仅仅是因为他必须从某个地方开始。他们并不认为这是一种荣誉,也不认为这是他们优越性的标志,而一些非犹太人却把这些态度强加于犹太人。

Judaism has several unique characteristics. First, though it makes claims to universality, it was and still is primarily the religion of a group of people who can, with qualifications, regard themselves as descendants of the ancient Israelites. Jews believe that they were chosen by God, but they do not believe that being chosen by God makes them special. They do not understand why they were chosen, and they regard it as a burden as much as a blessing. In fact, in the Book of Exodus, God suggests to Moses that perhaps he should begin again with a less fractious tribe. According to Jewish theologians, God chose the Jews simply because he had to begin somewhere. They do not see it as an honor or as a sign that they are superior, attitudes that are attributed to them by some non-Jews.

男孩在成人礼庆典上诵读《摩西五经》©丹·波格斯/盖蒂

Boy reads from Torah during Bar Mitzvah celebration. © Dan Porges/Getty

其次,犹太教在三千多年的时间里保留了其许多基本特征。尽管自公元135年最后一次反抗罗马的大规模叛乱被哈德良皇帝镇压以来,犹太人在1900多年的时间里一直是外来民族中一个广泛流散、经常遭受迫害的少数群体,但犹太教依然保持了其基本特征。最后,也是最重要的一点,犹太教是第一个明确提出独一真神是宇宙创造者和统治者的伟大宗教。

Second, Judaism has preserved much of its essential character for more than 3,000 years. It has done this in spite of the fact that for more than 1,900 years, ever since their last major rebellion against Rome was crushed by the Emperor Hadrian in ad 135, Jews have been a widely scattered and often persecuted minority among alien peoples. Finally, and most important, Judaism was the first great religion to develop a clear and unequivocal concept of a single God as the creator and ruler of the universe.

尽管有些犹太人相信死者复活,并认为人死后必须为自己的善恶行为负责,但与其他一些宗教不同,犹太教是一种肯定世界而非否定世界的信仰,它要求犹太人享受今生,并运用自身能力服务人类。它期待弥赛亚——犹太人期待的救赎者——的到来,期待一个弥赛亚时代,在那里,永恒的和平王国将盛行,所有邪恶的冲动都将从人心中被清除。但它拒绝基督教的信仰,即弥赛亚已经带着他的救赎信息降临。

Although some Jews believe in the resurrection of the dead and that people must account beyond the grave for their good and evil deeds, unlike some other religions Judaism is a world-affirming, not a world-denying, faith, and it requires that Jews enjoy this life and use their abilities for the service of humankind. It looks for the coming of the Messiah—the expected deliverer of the Jews—and for a messianic age in which the kingdom of eternal peace will prevail and all evil impulses will be removed from the human heart. But it rejects the Christian belief that the Messiah has already come with his message of salvation.

从中世纪到近代早期,欧洲犹太人的权利受到极大限制,他们被迫居住在城市中被称为“隔都”的特殊区域。法国大革命和拿破仑为将犹太人从隔都中解放出来做出了巨大贡献。但后来,犹太人遭遇了强烈的抵制,直到1848年社会动乱之后,大多数国家的犹太人才获得了或多或少永久的公民权。然而,这并没有结束他们的苦难,因为他们中的许多人很快在职业上取得了成功,却激起了新的反犹主义浪潮,即对犹太人的仇恨和厌恶。

From the Middle Ages to early modern times, the rights of Jews in Europe were greatly restricted, and they were forced to live in special sections of the cities called ghettos. The French Revolution and Napoleon did much to free Jews from the ghettos. But later there was a backlash, and it was not until after the social upheavals of 1848 that in most countries Jews received full rights of citizenship on a more or less permanent basis. This, however, did not end their troubles, for the very success that many of them soon enjoyed in their professions stirred up new waves of anti-Semitism, or feelings of hatred and dislike toward Jews.

十九世纪,犹太人摆脱了以往的限制,犹太教也随之发生了巨大的变化。渐渐地,不仅在欧洲,而且在美国,犹太人也分裂成了三大派别:正统派,他们抵制信仰和仪式的改变;改革派,他们拒绝犹太教的大部分传统主义,认为犹太教应该被视为一种不断变化和发展的宗教;以及保守派,他们无法接受正统派,但反对与传统的彻底决裂,因此寻求一种中间道路。

The freeing of the Jews in the nineteenth century from their former restrictions brought about great changes in Judaism. Gradually Jews, not only in Europe but also in the United States, became divided into three major groups: the Orthodox, who resist change in beliefs and ritual; the Reform, who reject much of Jewish traditionalism and believe that Judaism should be regarded as a changing and developing religion; and the Conservatives, who cannot accept the orthodoxy but who object to an extreme break with traditions and therefore seek a middle way.

犹太人有时被称为一个种族,但人类学家提醒我们,这种说法并不准确。他们最初属于高加索人种的一个分支,居住在阿拉伯半岛,并向北迁徙至肥沃的新月地带。他们曾形成一个民族,即古希伯来民族。但后来,他们几乎散居到世界各地,并在几个世纪中与居住地的非犹太人进行了一定程度的通婚。此外,他们还使一些非犹太民族皈依了犹太教。“犹太人”一词源于犹太教,这是他们的宗教。二战后,他们中的一些人移居到这片古老的土地,并创建了新的以色列国。

Jews sometimes are called a race, but anthropologists remind us that this term is inaccurate. Originally, they belonged to that branch of the Caucasoid race that inhabited the Arabian peninsula and spread into the fertile crescent to the north of it. They once formed a nationality, the ancient Hebrew nation. But later they were dispersed over almost the entire world, and over the centuries they interbred to some extent with the non-Jews of the countries in which they lived. Also, they converted several non-Jewish peoples to Judaism. The word Jew comes from Judaism, which is their religion. After World War II, some of them migrated to the ancient homeland and created the new nation of Israel.

准确确定美国犹太人的数量是不可能的。部分原因是,许多犹太族裔背景的人不属于任何犹太圣殿或其他犹太组织;部分原因是,犹太人和非犹太人之间通婚现象相当普遍;还有部分原因是,犹太人对于犹太人的定义存在分歧。传统上,犹太母亲所生的孩子都是犹太人。然而,在20世纪80年代代表美国约四分之一犹太人的改革派拉比对那些父亲是犹太人的独生子女给予了认可。

To determine the number of Jews in the United States with any great accuracy is impossible. This is partly because many persons of Jewish ethnic background maintain no affiliation with any temple or other Jewish organization, partly because there has been an appreciable amount of intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews, and partly because Jews disagree on who is a Jew. Tradition says anyone born to a Jewish mother is a Jew. However, in the 1980s the Reform rabbinate, representing about a quarter of US Jews, extended recognition to those whose only Jewish parent is the father.

纳粹集中营的一名囚犯

An inmate at a Nazi concentration camp.

犹太教越来越强调个人选择,皈依犹太教的人数也日益增多。一些犹太人认为这些进程危及他们作为上帝选民的传统观念,但另一些人则对这种趋势表示欢迎。目前,据估计美国约有七百万人可以被归类为犹太人。超过三分之一的美国犹太人居住在纽约大都会区,另有相当一部分犹太人集中在洛杉矶、费城、芝加哥和迈阿密等其他大城市。

There is an increasing emphasis on individual choice in Judaism, including rising numbers of conversions. Some Jews see these processes as endangering their traditional view of themselves as chosen by God, but others welcome these trends. At present, it is estimated that there are about seven million people in this country who can be classified as Jews. More than one-third of all US Jews live in metropolitan New York, and considerable numbers are concentrated in other large cities such as Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Miami.

犹太人有时主要被认为是一个宗教群体,但《新闻周刊》的一项民意调查显示,只有43%的美国犹太人认为自己是宗教人士。据天普大学政治学家丹尼尔·埃拉扎尔称,只有20%的犹太人定期进行礼拜。其余40%的犹太人名义上与某个寺庙保持联系,但通常只在他们的重要圣日——犹太新年和赎罪日——参加礼拜。

Jews are sometimes considered primarily a religious group, but in a poll taken by Newsweek, only 43 percent of US Jews said they considered themselves religious. According to political scientist Daniel Elazar of Temple University, only 20 percent of the Jewish population worships regularly. Of the others, 40 percent maintain nominal affiliation with a temple but usually attend services only on their high holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

平均而言,美国犹太人的收入明显高于其他人口,尽管超过50万人的收入低于联邦政府机构设定的家庭贫困线。犹太人的平均受教育程度也高于其他群体,而且,按其人口比例来看,他们在商界和各行各业的代表性也更高。

On the average, US Jews have markedly higher incomes than the rest of our population, though over half a million fall below the family poverty level as set by agencies of the federal government. Jews also, on average, have higher levels of education than other groups and, in proportion to their numbers, are much better represented in business and the professions.

对犹太人的偏见,或称反犹主义,已存在数个世纪,且在某些国家尤为严重。有时,这种偏见与宗教有关;有时,它被合理化为大多数人对犹太人群体所具有的某些文化或“种族”特征(这些特征大多是虚构的)的厌恶。在东欧某些地区,反犹主义有时发展到极端,导致数千名犹太人被杀害,例如沙皇俄国发生的大屠杀即有组织的大屠杀)。但反犹主义在纳粹德国达到了顶峰,导致六百万犹太人遇害的大屠杀以各种方式影响了犹太人和其他所有人。

Prejudice against the Jews, or anti-Semitism, has existed for centuries and has been strong in certain countries. Sometimes it has been tied to religion; sometimes it has been rationalized by dislike on the part of the majority of the population for certain cultural or “racial” characteristics, largely imaginary, attributed to the Jews as a group. In some parts of eastern Europe, anti-Semitism has at times gone to such extremes that thousands of Jews were killed, as in the pogroms, or organized massacres, that occurred in czarist Russia. But it was in Nazi Germany that anti-Semitism reached its height, and the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed, has affected Jews and everyone else in a variety of ways.

部分出于对纳粹大屠杀的愧疚,西方国家在二战后支持以色列建国。以色列建国的土地超过一半归巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人所有。1948年争夺这片土地控制权的战争后,大量巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人流离失所,被转移到邻近阿拉伯国家的难民营,他们及其后代至今仍生活在那里。中东的这片地区成为国际摩擦的主要根源。

Partially because of feelings of guilt for allowing the Holocaust to occur, the Western nations supported the establishment of the state of Israel after World War II. Israel was established from lands over 50 percent of which were owned by Palestinian Arabs. After the 1948 war for control of this land, a huge number of Palestinian Arabs were displaced and moved to refugee camps in neighboring Arab states where they and their descendants still live. This area of the Middle East became a prime source of international friction.

1994年,在经历了近五十年的冲突之后,犹太人和巴勒斯坦人正式同意和解,和平共处。该协议旨在最终促成巴勒斯坦人和以色列人之间达成永久和平条约,但边界争端阻碍了任何永久协议的达成,如今双方仍在战斗和严重争端中。

In 1994, after almost fifty years of conflict, the Jews and the Palestinians officially agreed to become reconciled and to live in peace. That agreement was meant to culminate in a permanent peace treaty between the Palestinians and the Israelis, but disputes about borders prevented any permanent agreement, and today the two sides remain engaged in fighting and serious disputes.

基督教

Christianity

西方世界的主要宗教基督教源于犹太教,其大部分基督教圣经(旧约)至今仍包含犹太教的圣典。古代犹太人相信,上帝会在他选定的时间击败他们的敌人,并在一位源自大卫王的弥赛亚(救世主)的统治下建立一个新的犹太王国。后来,一些人开始相信弥赛亚会在世界末日,死者复活之时从天而降,进行最后的审判。

Christianity, the principal religion of the Western world, developed from Judaism, and the greater part of the Christian Bible (the Old Testament) still consists of Jewish sacred writings. The ancient Jews believed that at his chosen time God would confound their enemies and set up a new Jewish kingdom under a Messiah (deliverer) descended from King David. Later, some came to believe that the Messiah would come down from heaven at the end of the world, at the time of the resurrection of the dead, and would carry out the last judgment.

基督教的创始人拿撒勒人耶稣,大约公元1年出生于伯利恒。这个日期本身就体现了宗教的力量。在西方文化中,发生在基督诞生之前的事件被称为“BC”,即“基督之前”。例如,在第三章提到,人类最早出现在中国大约公元前2万年。“AD”一词源于拉丁语anno domini,字面意思是“主的年份”。这个词被用来重新开始计算,公元1年是基督诞生的年份。公元2000年指的是基督诞生后的第二千年。1

Jesus of Nazareth, the founder of Christianity, was born in Bethlehem, about AD 1. This date in itself is an example of the power of religion. In Western cultures, events that took place before the birth of Christ are dated “BC,” meaning “Before Christ.” For instance, in Chapter 3, we said that humans first appeared in China about 20,000 BC. The term “AD” stands for the Latin words anno domini, which literally translated mean “in the year of our Lord.” This term is used to begin numbering all over again, with AD 1 as the year of Christ’s birth. The year AD 2000 means the two thousandth year after Christ’s birth.1

教皇在众多观众面前发表讲话© imageBROKER/Alamy 图片库

Pope in front of a large crowd. © imageBROKER/Alamy Stock Photo

在耶稣生命的某个时刻,他确信自己是弥赛亚,或基督,是上帝的圣子。他通常被称为耶稣基督,意思就是耶稣,弥赛亚。他开始传道后不久,大约三十岁,就召集了十二位使徒他们是他最亲密的伙伴,将成为他的主要助手,并在他死后继续他的传道工作。

At some point in Jesus’ life, he became convinced that he was the Messiah, or Christ, and the divine son of God. Often he is called Jesus Christ, which simply means Jesus, the Messiah. Soon after he started his ministry, at about the age of thirty, he gathered around him the Apostles, the twelve close associates who were to be his chief aides and who were to carry on his ministry after his death.

我们对耶稣教义的了解是间接地传递给我们的。他没有把这些教义写下来,而是依靠门徒凭记忆传讲他所教导的内容。我们的主要资料来源首先是《新约》中的福音书,其次是《使徒书信》。但这些书信是在耶稣死后很久才写成的。历史学家认为四本福音书写于公元 65 年至公元 100 年左右。据推测,它们基于他的一些追随者根据记忆记录下他的言论的文献。但是,他的言论和生平事件记录得有多准确,或者福音书的历代抄写者或修订者对其中的内容进行了多少修改或添加,历史学者无法确切地告诉我们。

Our knowledge of Jesus’ teachings conies to us indirectly. He did not write them down but depended on his disciples to preach from memory what he had taught. Our chief sources are, first, the Gospels of the New Testament and, second, the Epistles. But these were prepared long after Jesus’ death. The four Gospels are thought by historians to have been written between AD 65 and about AD 100. Presumably, they were based on documents in which some of his followers had recorded his sayings as they remembered them. But how accurately his sayings and the events of his life were recorded, or how much was changed or added by successive copiers or revisers of the Gospels, historical scholarship cannot tell us with any certainty.

耶稣从未怀疑过上帝的真实性,也从未怀疑过他与上帝的特殊关系。但他知道,他并非像某些听众所期望的那样,被差遣去重建大卫在地上的王国,将犹太人从罗马帝国中解救出来。相反,他受天父差遣,是为了向全人类,无论犹太人还是外邦人,指明通往天国的救恩之路。和他那个时代的许多犹太人一样,他相信早已预言的弥赛亚上帝之国很快就会到来,但对他来说,那是一个天上的国度,只属于那些相信他、真心悔改罪孽、并在为时未晚之前顺服上帝旨意的人。

Jesus never doubted the reality of God or of his own special relationship to God. But he knew he had not been sent, as some of his hearers hoped, to deliver the Jews from Rome by reestablishing the earthly kingdom of David. Rather, he had been sent by his Father to show all of humanity, Jews and Gentiles alike, the way to heavenly salvation. Like many Jews of his day, he believed that the long-foretold messianic kingdom of God would come rather soon, but for him it was a kingdom in heaven, which was only for those who would believe in him, who would truly repent of their sins, and who would surrender to the will of God before it was too late.

耶稣教导说,最重要的是相信上帝,遵行祂的旨意,并相信耶稣是上帝之子,至善至美:至公至义,也宽恕仁慈。因此,人们应该完全信靠祂,并经常通过祈祷寻求精神上的帮助。耶稣还教导说,上帝要求我们彼此相爱,无论敌友。对于虔诚的基督徒来说,这一直是最难理解的教义之一,也最难将其作为日常行为的实用指南。此外,耶稣教导门徒要遵守上帝在西奈山传给摩西的十诫,并遵循黄金法则。黄金法则是:“你们愿意人怎样待你们,你们也要怎样待人。”

Jesus taught that the most important things are to believe in God, do His will and to believe in Jesus as the son of God is utterly good: supremely righteous and just, but also forgiving and merciful. Therefore, people should trust him completely and regularly seek spiritual aid through prayer. Jesus also taught that God demands we love one another, friend and foe alike, and this has been one of the most difficult teachings for devout Christians to interpret and to apply as a practical guide in daily conduct. In addition, Jesus taught his disciples to obey the Ten Commandments, which God transmitted to Moses on Mount Sinai, and to follow the golden rule. The latter states, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

耶稣在加利利成功吸引众人,这很快引起了耶路撒冷两大犹太教派或党派领袖的注意——撒都该人和法利赛人。他们之间有分歧,但都成了耶稣的敌人,因为耶稣的教导和行为并不总是遵循犹太律法或传统的规定。耶稣传道三四年后,决定在逾越节期间前往耶路撒冷,届时来自各地的犹太人将聚集在一起庆祝一年一度的盛大节日。这给了耶稣的敌人一个机会,在民众中煽动对他的不满。最终,他们抓住耶稣,控告他,并以他自称是犹太人的王为由,向罗马总督彼拉多告发他。彼拉多怀疑耶稣的罪行,但当众人要求处死耶稣时,总督默许了,并下令将耶稣钉死在各各他十字架上。

Jesus’ success in drawing crowds in Galilee soon attracted the attention of the leaders of the two principal Jewish sects, or parties, in Jerusalem—the Sadducees and the Pharisees. They had their own differences, but both became enemies of Jesus because his teaching and his actions did not always follow the dictates of either Judaic law or tradition. After he had been preaching for three or four years, Jesus decided to go to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover, when Jews from a wide area would be assembled for the great annual festival. This gave the enemies of Jesus an opportunity to stir up ill feeling against him among the people. Finally, they seized him, made accusations against him, and denounced him to the Roman governor, Pilate, on the grounds that he claimed to be king of the Jews. Pilate doubted Jesus’ guilt, but when the crowd demanded death, the governor acquiesced and ordered Jesus’ crucifixion at Golgotha.

高迪的巴塞罗那大教堂© eye35/Alamy 图片库

Gaudi's Barcelona cathedral. © eye35/Alamy Stock Photo

福音书和使徒书信中记载的三件事件对基督教至关重要:(1)耶稣被钉十字架前夕与门徒的最后晚餐;(2)耶稣被钉十字架;以及(3)耶稣死后第三天的复活。早在抵达耶路撒冷之前,耶稣就已向十二使徒预言了他的死亡和复活。基督教的一个核心信仰是,耶稣的死是为了救赎人类的罪孽,从而为他们开辟了救赎之路。在圣餐礼中,虔诚的领圣餐者相信他们与基督建立了特殊的关系。圣餐礼最初由耶稣与十二门徒在最后的晚餐中共同举行。他们所饮的酒和所吃的饼象征着基督的血和肉,或者在天主教教义中实际上变成了基督的血和肉。因此,领圣餐者凭借基督通过死亡和复活所获得的救赎力量,在寻求救赎的过程中得到了力量。

Three events reported in the Gospels and the Epistles are of crucial significance for Christianity: (1) the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples on the evening before the crucifixion, (2) his crucifixion, and (3) his resurrection on the third day after his death. Even before coming to Jerusalem, Jesus had foretold his death and resurrection to the twelve apostles. A key belief of the Christian religion is that Jesus died to redeem the sins of humankind and thus opened for them the way to salvation. In the sacrament of Communion, or the Eucharist, which was first celebrated by Jesus with the twelve disciples at the Last Supper, devout communicants believe that they enter into a special relationship with Christ. The wine they drink and the bread they eat symbolize, or in Catholic doctrine actually become, the blood and body of Christ. The communicant is thus strengthened in his or her attempts to achieve salvation by the redemptive power that Christ achieved through his death and resurrection.

早期基督徒耶稣死后,基督教的传播相对较快,但早期基督教团体(或教会)的联系却十分松散。然而,到了公元一世纪末,罗马及其他地区的行政组织开始发展,主教们开始掌权,不仅有权任命神父监督地方教会,还能处理教义纠纷。罗马主教的首席地位逐渐在整个帝国得到认可,到公元三世纪末,他甚至获得了教皇的头衔。

The Early Christians The spread of Christianity after Jesus’ death was relatively rapid, but the early Christian groups, or churches, were only loosely linked. By the end of the first century, however, administrative organization had begun to develop in Rome and elsewhere, and bishops began to assume authority not only to appoint priests to oversee local churches but also to settle disputes over doctrine. Gradually the primacy of the bishop of Rome became recognized throughout the empire, and by the end of the third century, he had taken the title of pope.

中世纪及之后时期:公元476年西罗马帝国最终崩溃之前,罗马教会已发展得足够强大,足以阻止日耳曼部落接连入侵罗马帝国,导致秩序和文明彻底崩溃。在中世纪,教会主宰着欧洲的宗教和知识生活,并在很大程度上控制着欧洲的政治和经济。与此同时,以君士坦丁堡(现称伊斯坦布尔)为首都的东罗马帝国依然存在,而东方教会(后来被称为东正教)则日益脱离罗马。教会两部分最终于1054年决裂,或称分裂,并持续至今。

The Middle Ages and After Before the final collapse of the Roman Empire in the West in ad 476, the Church of Rome had become strong enough to prevent the complete breakdown of order and civilization that might otherwise have resulted from the successive invasions of the empire by Germanic tribes. During the Middle Ages, the church dominated the religious and intellectual life of Europe and to a great extent its politics and economics. Meanwhile, the eastern Roman Empire with its capital at Constantinople (now known as Istanbul) still survived, and the Eastern Church, later known as the Orthodox Church, became increasingly independent of Rome. The final break, or schism, between the two parts of the church occurred in 1054 and remains to this day.

罗马教会下一次大规模叛变是在几百年后发生的。在十五世纪,甚至更早的时候,许多基督徒认为教会正在经历道德沦丧。文艺复兴重新引发了人们对艺术、文学和古典作品的兴趣,无疑加剧了普遍的动荡。改革者开始呼吁宗教回归其本源。其结果是宗教改革即新教徒反抗传统天主教的起义,始于1517年,当时马丁·路德在德国维滕贝格的教堂门口张贴了他的改革呼吁。其他重要的宗教改革领袖包括瑞士的乌尔里希·茨温格利和约翰·加尔文,以及苏格兰的约翰·诺克斯。

The next great defection from the Church of Rome did not occur for several hundred years. In the fifteenth century, or perhaps even earlier, many Christians felt that the church was undergoing moral decay. The Renaissance, which brought a renewal of interest in art, literature, and the works of classical antiquity, undoubtedly contributed to a general unrest. Reformers began to urge that religion revert to its sources. The result was the Reformation, the Protestant revolt against traditional Catholicism, which began in 1517 when Martin Luther posted his call for reform on the door of the church in Wittenberg, Germany. Other important leaders of the Reformation included Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin in Switzerland and John Knox in Scotland.

宗教改革导致了相当长的一段时间的宗教和政治动荡,包括宗教战争和各国对异见团体的镇压。虽然宗教改革未能赢得大多数天主教徒皈依新教,但却导致了大量天主教徒脱离罗马天主教会。然而,成功摆脱罗马控制的新教徒并没有成功合并成为一个独立的大型教会团体,而是分裂成了许多教派。其中包括清教徒和贵格会教徒,他们在英国殖民地的殖民过程中发挥了重要作用。

The Reformation led to a considerable period of religious and political turmoil, including religious wars and repression of dissident groups in various countries, and though it did not win over the majority of Catholics to Protestantism, it did result in substantial defections from the Roman Catholic Church. But the Protestants who succeeded in gaining freedom from control by Rome did not succeed in joining to form a major independent church body Instead, they divided into a considerable number of sects, or denominations. Several of these, including the Puritans and Quakers, played an important role in the settlement of the British colonies in America.

欧洲移民到美洲以及南非、澳大利亚和新西兰等地区,也带来了基督教。在美国和加拿大(魁北克除外)等一些地区,来自西北欧的新教定居者占多数。在其他地区,例如几乎所有拉丁美洲地区,定居者主要来自天主教占主导地位的国家,例如西班牙、葡萄牙和意大利。19世纪兴起的强大的传教运动也把基督教传播到了世界其他地区,但在大多数非基督教国家,传教士只成功地使一小部分人皈依了基督教。

European migration to the Americas and to areas such as South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand carried Christianity with it. In some areas, such as the United States and Canada except Quebec, Protestant settlers from northwestern Europe were in the majority. In other areas, as in practically all of Latin America, settlers came largely from overwhelmingly Catholic countries such as Spain, Portugal, and Italy. Christianity was also carried to other parts of the world by the strong missionary movement that developed in the nineteenth century, but in most non-Christian countries missionaries succeeded in converting only a small fraction of the people.

美国现代基督教

Modern Christianity in the United States

美国是一个以基督教为主的国家,但也有许多不同的基督教派别;一神论派或圣公会教徒与福音派基督徒在世界观和信仰方面存在显著差异。在大多数情况下,美国基督教与国家运作顺畅,但当某些基督教原教旨主义团体在堕胎等问题上的道德观点与国家法律所表达的道德观点不同时,宗教与国家之间就会产生冲突。当存在此类差异时,个人被迫在两者之间做出选择。当国家与宗教各自在自己的领域内时,它们的融合效果最佳。耶稣的训诫体现了这一观点,即他的追随者应该“凯撒的物当归给凯撒,上帝的物当归给上帝”。

The United States is primarily a Christian state, but there are many different groups of Christians; a Unitarian or an Episcopalian differs significantly from an evangelical Christian in terms of worldview and beliefs. For the most part, US Christianity functions smoothly with the state, but conflict between religion and state can arise when the moral views of certain Christian fundamentalist groups on issues such as abortion differ from the moral views as expressed in the laws of the state. When such differences exist, individuals are forced to choose between the two. The state integrates best with religion when each stays in its own sphere. That view is captured in Jesus’ edict that his followers were to “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and unto God that which is God’s.”

伊斯兰教

Islam

伊斯兰教与犹太教和基督教一样,是基于神启的宗教。其使者穆罕默德与摩西一样,并不自称神明。他只相信自己被上帝或真主选中,从天使加百列那里获得真主旨意的启示。这些启示频繁出现,穆罕默德会向所有愿意聆听的人完整地复述这些启示。在他去世后不久,他的朋友艾布·巴勒将这些启示汇编成《古兰经》,即穆斯林的圣典。艾布·巴克尔成为第一位继承者,即哈里发,继承了穆罕默德的事业。《古兰经》开篇如下:

Islam, like Judaism and Christianity, is a religion based on divine revelation, and its messenger, Muhammad, like Moses, made no claims to divinity for himself. He believed only that he had been chosen by God, or Allah, to receive from the angel Gabriel revelations of Allah's will. These revelations, which became frequent, he repeated in full to those who would listen, and shortly after his death they were assembled by his friend Abu Baler to form the Qu’ran, the holy scriptures of the Muslims. Abu Bakr became the first successor, or caliph, to carry on Muhammad’s work. The Qur’an begins as follows:

《古兰经》可以在网络上以各种格式查阅,以便于搜索特定主题,而且,鉴于伊斯兰教对现代世界事务的重要性,浏览《古兰经》绝对是一项有价值的活动。

The Qur’an is accessible on the Web in formats that are easily searchable for specific topics, and, given the importance of Islam to modern world affairs, browsing through it is definitely a worthwhile activity.

穆罕默德约于公元570年出生于麦加,位于今沙特阿拉伯西部。根据传说,他生于孤儿院,先后受祖父和叔父抚养,这两位叔父都是科雷什部落的显赫成员。后来,他成为一名商人,并在大约25岁时成为一位比他大15岁的富有寡妇的商业顾问,并最终与她结婚。与此同时,他接触到了当时的阿拉伯宗教,该宗教融合了万物有灵论和多神论。穆罕默德还从麦加的熟人那里了解了一些犹太教和基督教,这些熟人都信奉这两种宗教。他与犹太人和基督徒的接触,或许加剧了他对阿拉伯同胞的信仰和习俗的不满。

Muhammad was born about ad 570 at Mecca, in the western part of what is now Saudi Arabia. According to tradition, he was orphaned and became a ward first of his grandfather and then of an uncle, both of whom were prominent members of the Koreish tribe. Later he was a merchant, and at about the age of twenty-five he became the business advisor to a rich widow, fifteen years his senior, whom he eventually married. Meanwhile, he had come into contact with the Arabian religion of his time, which was a mixture of animism and polytheism. Muhammad had also learned something about Judaism and Christianity from his acquaintances in Mecca who were followers of both religions. His contacts with Jews and Christians may have contributed to his dissatisfaction with the beliefs and practices of his fellow Arab tribesmen.

穆罕默德本人创立了伊斯兰教,但他深受基督教和犹太教的影响。他认为自己正在完成并完善摩西、耶稣和其他天上使者的事业,他将这些使者视为自己的先驱。但穆罕默德否认基督教的三位一体教义和基督的神性。根据《古兰经》,真主独一且永恒。他既不生育,也不被生育。

Though Muhammad himself initiated the religion of Islam, he was greatly influenced by Christianity and Judaism. He considered that he was completing and perfecting the work of Moses, Jesus, and other heavenly messengers whom he recognized as his forerunners. But Muhammad denied the Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. According to the Qur’an, God is one and God is eternal. He neither begets nor is begotten.

在阿拉伯语中,伊斯兰教意为“顺从”,穆斯林是顺从真主旨意的人。虔诚的穆斯林的目标非常简单:履行《古兰经》所规定的义务,并效法穆罕默德生前言行的典范。对虔诚的穆斯林来说,《古兰经》是绝对正确的。

In Arabic, Islam means “submission,” and Muslims are submitters to the will of God. Tire devout Muslims goal is fairly simple: It is to perform one’s duties as outlined in the Qur’an and as exemplified by the acts of Muhammad in his lifetime. For devout Muslims, the Qur’an is infallible.

圣殿山(犹太名称)或圣殿山(穆斯林名称)© blue64/iStock

Temple Mount (Jewish name) or Haram esh-Sharif (Muslim name). © blue64/iStock

所谓的伊斯兰教五大支柱阐明了信徒不可或缺的宗教义务:

The so-called Five Pillars of Islam state the indispensable religious duties of a believer:

  1. 接受并经常重复“万物非主,唯有真主,穆罕默德是真主的使者”这一信条。
  2. Acceptance and frequent repetition of the creed, “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.”
  3. 每天进行五次规定的祈祷和奉献仪式。
  4. The performance five times a day of prescribed rituals of prayer and devotion.
  5. 向有需要的人施舍。
  6. The giving of alms to the needy.
  7. 斋月期间的斋戒,这是天使加百列向穆罕默德显现的月份。
  8. The fast during Ramadan, the month when the angel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad.
  9. 那些有能力的人一生中都会去麦加的天房石朝圣一次。
  10. The pilgrimage to the Kaaba stone at Mecca once in a lifetime by those who can afford it.

从公元七世纪到十八世纪,伊斯兰教西至西班牙,东至菲律宾。它通过从其发源地阿拉伯通往贸易路线的便利以及军事征服实现了这一目标。伊斯兰教的影响力时起时落,到1918年第一次世界大战结束时已跌至低谷。然而,到了二十世纪下半叶,随着政治独立和民族意识的觉醒,伊斯兰教开始复兴,并再次扩大其影响力。如今,它的主要分布地区是阿拉伯半岛、北非和西非、中东、土耳其、阿富汗、印度次大陆、前苏联部分地区以及印度尼西亚。在美国和欧洲,穆斯林的数量都在增长,一些权威人士预测,未来几十年美国的穆斯林人数将超过犹太人。

From the seventh century AD to the eighteenth century, Islam spread as far west as Spain and as far east as the Philippines. It was able to do this through its access to trade routes from its original home in Arabia and through military conquest. Islam’s influence ebbed and flowed, but by the end of World War I in 1918 it had reached a low. By the second half of the twentieth century, however, with political independence and national consciousness, Islam was enjoying a resurgence and again extending its influence. Today its principal distribution is in the Arabian peninsula, North and West Africa, the Middle East, Turkey, Afghanistan, and the Indian subcontinent, parts of the former USSR, and Indonesia. In both the United States and Europe, the number of Muslims is growing, and some authorities predict that there will be more Muslims than Jews in the United States in coming decades.

美国和欧洲穆斯林人数不断增长的原因之一是叙利亚、利比亚和阿富汗的冲突,这些冲突导致数百万人流离失所,并导致欧洲将他们归类为政治难民。这种分类使他们有资格移民,而如果他们被归类为经济难民(因经济原因而移民的难民),则没有资格移民。2015年,德国接收了超过一百万移民,其中大多数是穆斯林,这引发了德国选民的强烈反对,他们认为短时间内接收的移民数量太多了。

One of the reasons for the growing number of Muslims in the United States and Europe was the conflicts in Syria, Libya, and Afghanistan, which displaced millions of people, and led Europe to classify them as political refugees. This classification made them eligible to emigrate, whereas had they been classified as economic refugees—refugees who are moving for economic reasons, they would not have been eligible. In 2015, Germany took in more than a million migrants, most of whom were Muslims, leading to a backlash among voters in Germany who argued that it was too many in a short space of time.

伊斯兰教的教派穆罕默德死后,伊斯兰教分裂为两大派系:什叶派(宗派主义者,阿里的追随者,先知的表兄),他们认为阿里是穆罕默德的合法继承人;逊尼派(传统主义者),他们认为穆罕默德最年长的同伴阿布·伯克尔是合法继承人。如今,逊尼派约占穆斯林总数的85%,什叶派约占15%。此外,伊斯兰教中还有一些较小的派别,包括苏菲派和瓦哈比派,虽然人数不多,但在伊斯兰世界与西方世界的互动中发挥着重要作用。

The Denominations of Islam After Muhammad’s death, Islam split into two factions: the Shiites (the sectarians, followers of Ali, cousin to the Prophet), who believed that Ali was the legitimate successor to Muhammad, and the Sunnis (the traditionalists), who believed that Abu Bakr, the oldest companion of Muhammad, was the legitimate successor. Today Sunnis constitute about 85 percent of all Muslims and Shiites constitute about 15 percent. There are also smaller sects of Islam, including the Sufis and the Wahhabis, and though they are small in number, they can play important roles in the interaction between the Islamic world and the Western world.

逊尼派和什叶派的区别在于谁应该被视为社会中合法的宗教权威。什叶派信奉伊玛目体系。他们认为,现任伊玛目才是穆斯林的真正领袖,所有真正的穆斯林都必须服从他的统治。伊玛目由现任伊玛目任命,这意味着存在一个继承顺序,并且始终假设在世的伊玛目是统治者。由于伊玛目在信徒中拥有巨大的权力,可以指挥人们做什么,因此伊玛目可能(而且经常)与政府发生冲突,因为政府也声称有权指挥人们做什么。伊朗就是一个例子,该国什叶派占多数。伊朗既有宗教权威——伊玛目,又有民选政府,因此人们常常无法确定究竟哪个权威才是真正的权威。

The difference between Sunnis and Shiites concerns who should be seen as the legitimate religious authority in society. Shiites follow a system of Imamah. They believe that the existing Imam is the true leader of Muslims, and that all true Muslims must submit to his rule. Imams are appointed by existing Imams, which means there is a line of succession that always assumes a living Imam as ruler. Because Imams carry enormous power among believers to tell people what to do, Imamah can, and often does, come into conflict with governments, which also claim the right to tell people what to do. An example is Iran, which has a Shiite majority. Iran has both a religious authority—the Imam—and a democratically elected government, and there is often confusion about which authority is in charge.

逊尼派不信奉伊玛目体系。这意味着,逊尼派通常更乐意接受世俗统治者,只要该世俗统治者不干涉宗教的精神层面。伊拉克既有逊尼派,也有什叶派,其中多数派。然而,伊拉克从来都不是一个民主国家,直到2004年,逊尼派一直掌权。美国此前支持萨达姆·侯赛因与伊朗开战,部分原因就是为了阻止什叶派多数派掌权。

Sunnis do not follow a system of Imamah. This means that Sunnis generally are more content with having a secular ruler as long as that secular ruler does not interfere with the spiritual dimension of religion. In Iraq there are both Sunnis and Shiites, with the Shiites in the majority. However, Iraq had never been a democracy, and until 2004 the Sunnis were in charge. It was in part to keep the Shiite majority out of power that the United States had earlier supported Saddam Hussein in his war with Iran.

《古兰经》是伊斯兰教的圣书。© mrehan/iStock

The Qur'an is the Holy Book of Islam. © mrehan/iStock

2003年入侵伊拉克后,美国一直难以在伊拉克建立一个民主政府,美国声称这是入侵的目标之一。伊拉克的什叶派占多数,而什叶派的信仰往往将伊玛目统治的宗教统治置于世俗民主统治之上。什叶派如今所面临的问题,正是卢梭在其早期关于民主的论述中对宗教与政府关系感到绝望,并呼吁政府建立公民宗教以避免冲突的问题。

After invading Iraq in 2003, the United States struggled with setting up a democratic government, which the United States stated was one of the goals of the invasion, in a country with a Shiite majority whose beliefs often put religious rule by an Imam above secular democratic rule. The type of problem the Shiite sect presents today was the kind of problem that led Rousseau early on in his discussion of democracy to despair of the relationship between religion and government, and to call on government to set up a civil religion that avoided the conflict.

伊斯兰原教旨主义近年来,人们对有时被称为伊斯兰原教旨主义的东西及其与恐怖主义和圣战的联系进行了大量讨论。在阿拉伯语中,圣战的意思是“奋斗”,但西方媒体通常用它来表示针对西方世界的神圣战争。与所有原教旨主义宗教团体一样,关于原教旨主义伊斯兰教的含义以及某些团体是否应被视为原教旨主义穆斯林存在很多争议。根据字典,原教旨主义包括“严格维护古老或基本的教义”。问题在于,这些教义的含义通常存在歧义,而问题在于谁在解释它们。对于一些原教旨主义者,例如基地组织和ISIS(伊拉克和叙利亚伊斯兰国),赋予伊斯兰教权力是一个神圣的目标,他们认为这是上帝对人类的计划,而这只能通过建立伊斯兰国家来实现。他们将这些教义解读为要求穆斯林与西方世界作战并重建伊斯兰国家,而不顾社会和人类的代价。对伊斯兰教的这种解读导致了对伊斯兰国家进行恐怖袭击和战争的正当化,以便用原教旨主义的伊斯兰政府取代现有政府。

Islamic Fundamentalism In recent years, there has been much discussion of what is sometimes called Islamic fundamentalism and its connection to terrorism and jihad. In Arabic, jihad means “striving,” but it is commonly used by the Western press to denote a sacred war against the Western world. As with all fundamentalist religious groups, there is much dispute about what is meant by fundamentalist Islam and whether some groups should be considered as fundamentalist Muslims. According to the dictionary, fundamentalism consists of “strict maintenance of ancient or fundamental doctrines.” The problem is that there is generally ambiguity about what those doctrines are, and the issue comes down to who is interpreting them. For some fundamentalists, such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) the empowerment of Islam, which they see as Gods plan for human kind, is a sacred end, and it can be achieved only through the establishment of an Islamic state. They interpret these doctrines as requiring Muslims to fight against the Western world and to reestablish an Islamic state, regardless of the costs to society and humanity. This interpretation of Islam had led to justification of terrorist attacks and wars in Islamic countries to replace existing governments with fundamentalist Islamic governments.

其他穆斯林对此的解读截然不同;许多人只想自由地追随自己的精神信仰,将世俗事务留给政府处理。他们关心的是宗教,而不是政府。对他们来说,宗教原教旨主义仅仅是严格遵守五大支柱。这两种原教旨主义观点之间的区别有时被称为复兴主义者(追求精神上的虔诚)与狂热分子和极端分子(利用这种虔诚来达到政治目的)之间的区别。

Other Muslims interpret them quite differently; many simply want to be left alone to follow their spiritual beliefs, leaving secular matters to government. Their concern is with religion, not government. For them, religious fundamentalism is simply strict adherence to the Five Pillars. The difference between the two views of fundamentalism has sometimes been called the difference between revivalists, who want to be spiritually devout, and fanatics and extremists, who exploit this devotion for political ends.

领导伊朗伊斯兰革命的阿亚图拉霍梅尼将原教旨主义与什叶派对伊玛目作用的信仰结合起来,认为伊斯兰政府是法治政府,任何统治者都需要法律知识,所以统治者应该是法律知识最渊博的人。按照这种解释,推翻现有的世俗政府,代之以像他这样的伊斯兰教士统治是恰当的。这种观点更符合什叶派的观点,而不是逊尼派的观点,逊尼派认为宗教与世俗政府应该分离。霍梅尼还声称西方正在发动一场消灭伊斯兰教的运动,西方的方式是邪恶的。他这样说,尤其把美国描绘成大撒旦,声称善良的穆斯林会拒绝美国的技术和生活方式。

Ayatollah Khomeini, who led the Islamic revolution in Iran, combined fundamentalism with the Shiite belief in the role of the Imam and argued that because Islamic government is a government of law, and because a knowledge of law is necessary for anyone to rule, the person who should rule is the person whose knowledge of the law surpasses all others. Under this interpretation, it is appropriate to revolt against existing secular governments and replace them with rule by Islamic clerics, such as himself. This perspective fit Shiite views much better than it fit Sunni views, which posited a separation between religion and secular government. Khomeini also claimed that the West was on a crusade to eliminate Islam from the world and that Western ways were evil. In so doing he portrayed the United States in particular as the great Satan, claiming that good Muslims would reject US technology and way of life.

其他伊斯兰学者,例如赛义德·穆罕默德·侯赛因·法德拉拉,则认为问题不在于西方正在发起一场消灭伊斯兰教的圣战,而在于西方剥夺了穆斯林的土地。与霍梅尼不同,这些学者认为伊斯兰教可以有选择地借鉴西方的技术和制度。这些争论在伊斯兰社会仍在继续,其结果将对世界和平发挥重要作用。

Other Islamic scholars such as Sayyid Muhammad Husayn Fadlallah have argued that the problem is not that the West is on a crusade to eliminate Islam, but instead that the West has dispossessed Muslims. Unlike Khomeini, these scholars argue that Islam could selectively borrow technology and institutions from the West. These debates are still going on in Islamic society, and the outcome will play an important role in the peace of the world.

宗教在社会中的作用

The Role of Religion in Society

毫无疑问,在大多数原始社会和早期文明中,宗教信仰和习俗是强大的整合因素。正因为这些信仰和习俗,人们知道他们个人和群体应该如何行事,才能避免神的诅咒并赢得他们的恩惠。他们知道某些事物是神圣的,如果群体想要避免饥荒或其他灾祸,就不能允许任何人对神明不敬。宗教信仰与行为准则紧密相连,通常对习俗和传统给予强有力的支持。

There can be little doubt that in most primitive societies and the earliest civilizations, religious beliefs and practices were a strong integrative factor. Because of these beliefs and practices, people knew how they must behave individually and as a group to avoid the ill will of the gods and to win their favor. They knew certain things were sacred and that if the group was to avoid famine or other misfortunes, no one must be allowed to treat the gods with disrespect. Religious beliefs were tied to rules of behavior and usually gave strong support to custom and tradition.

在文明早期,几乎每个“国家”都有自己的神祇,有时,例如在古埃及,国王本身也被视为神明。即使在20世纪的日本,直到1945年,神道教的教义仍然认为天皇是太阳女神的后裔。因此,人民不仅因共同的信仰而团结在一起,也因共同的祈祷、赞美和祭祀仪式而团结在一起。

In the early history of civilization, almost every “nation” had its own gods, and sometimes, as in ancient Egypt, the king himself was regarded as divine. Even in twentieth-century Japan, until 1945 Shinto doctrine held that the emperor was a descendant of the sun goddess. As a result, the people were drawn together not only by their common beliefs but also by their participation in common rituals of prayer, praise, and sacrifice.

然而,在世界上较为发达的文明中,宗教信仰差异往往是社会冲突的根源,尤其当不同宗教信仰的群体生活在同一国界时。为了了解这一潜在问题,不妨看看北爱尔兰的例子:新教徒与天主教徒发生冲突;以及印度:印度教徒与穆斯林发生冲突。

Not infrequently, however, in the more highly developed civilizations of the world, differences in religious beliefs have been a source of social conflict, especially when groups with different religious beliefs have lived within the same national borders. To get an idea of the potential problem, look, for example, at Northern Ireland, where Protestants and Catholics clash, and at India, where Hindus clash with Muslims.

宗教是道德价值观和社会变革的源泉

Religion as a Source of Moral Values and Social Change

因此,宗教或许会成为一种破坏社会的力量,但多年来,它的主要影响力似乎在于整合和稳定国家与文化。在西方世界,各种形式的基督教是主流信仰,几个世纪以来,我们的伦理道德价值观因基督教教义而不断修正,并被赋予了更大的生命力。

Religion, then, can be a socially disruptive force, but it seems clear that over the years its major influence has been to integrate and stabilize nations and cultures. In the Western world, where Christianity in its various forms is by a wide margin the predominant faith, our ethical and moral values have, over the centuries, been modified and given greater vitality by the teachings of the Christian religion.

宗教的整合力量源于它赋予伦理道德原则神圣的权威。如果没有人们对这些原则的坚守,我们将难以维持一个拥有自由选举和广泛个人自由的有序社会,难以高效地生产商品以期消除贫困,也难以总体上维持我们既有的文明水平。

Religions integrative force derives from the fact that it gives divine authority to ethical and moral principles. Without people's adherence to such principles, it would be difficult to maintain an orderly society with free elections and a wide range of personal freedoms, to produce goods with enough efficiency to hope to eliminate poverty, and in general to maintain the level of civilization we have already achieved.

宗教通过对个人的影响,也对经济和政治制度产生冲击。伟大的德国社会学家马克斯·韦伯(1864-1920)在他的《新教伦理与资本主义精神》一书中阐述了这一论点。根据他的理论,宗教改革后发展起来的新教派别,特别是那些受到加尔文教义影响的派别,对英国和西欧的经济繁荣以及现代工业资本主义的发展做出了重大贡献。他们这样做是因为他们相信新教伦理,即上帝期望善良的基督徒努力工作、储蓄、投资积蓄并表现出商业主动性的理论。新教伦理在美国坚韧的个人主义、私营企业和财务成功理想的发展中也发挥了重要作用。

Through its influence on individuals, religion also has an impact on economic and political institutions. The great German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) developed this thesis in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. According to his theory, the new Protestant sects that developed out of the Reformation, especially those that were influenced by the doctrines of Calvin, made a major contribution to the economic prosperity of Britain and western Europe and to the development of modern industrial capitalism. They did so because they believed in the Protestant ethic, the theory that God expects good Christians to work hard, to save, to invest their savings, and to show business initiative. The Protestant ethic also played a major role in the development of the American ideals of rugged individualism, private enterprise, and financial success.

高度重视劳动以及物质进步所必需的各种行为,从来都不是清教徒或新教徒的专利。这种特质在那些决心改善自身境况的人们身上随处可见,并且存在于所有社会和文化中。

Putting a high value on work and on the kinds of behavior necessary for material progress was never a Puritan or Protestant monopoly. It is a characteristic found everywhere among people who are determined to improve their condition, and it can be found in all societies and cultures.

宗教是道德价值观的源泉,因此它也能成为社会变革的源泉。例如,教会在民权运动中发挥了引领作用,正如其早期在反奴隶制运动中发挥的作用一样。教会也积极推动更普遍的经济和社会平等,并将道德议题纳入政治对话。

Because religion is a source of moral values, it can also be a source of social change. For example, churches led the way in the civil rights battle, just as they had earlier in the antislavery movement. Churches have also been active in the push for more general economic and social equality, and for adding issues of morality to the political dialogue.

宗教对教育、艺术和文学的影响

Impact of Religion on Education, the Arts, and Literature

宗教对教育、艺术、音乐和文学的影响无处不在。在中世纪,教堂,尤其是修道院,保存了古代文学,使知识得以传承。在美国,从殖民时代一直到十九世纪,大多数学院和大学都是由宗教组织创办和控制的。其中许多至今仍由教会控制,一些宗教团体还运营着广泛的中学和小学系统。古希腊和欧洲文艺复兴时期的许多伟大艺术作品都描绘了具有宗教意义的人物或事件。在宗教音乐领域,我们可以找到像巴赫和亨德尔这样杰出的作曲家;在文学领域,我们可以找到像但丁的《地狱篇》弥尔顿的《失乐园》这样的伟大诗歌。

The influence of religion on education, the arts, music, and literature is pervasive. During the Middle Ages, the church and especially the monasteries preserved ancient literature and kept learning alive. In the United States, from colonial times until well into the nineteenth century, most of our colleges and universities were started and controlled by religious organizations. Many of them are still church-controlled, and some religious bodies operate extensive systems of secondary and primary schools. Many of the great works of art of ancient Greece and the European Renaissance are representations of personalities or events with religious significance. In the field of religious music, we find such outstanding composers as Bach and Handel, and in literature we have great poems such as Dante's Inferno and Milton’s Paradise Lost.

佛教和印度教启发了众多寺庙、绘画和雕塑,它们精巧复杂、神秘莫测、雄伟壮观、美不胜收。尤其是在印度,这些艺术作品展现出无与伦比的丰饶与活力。在印度尼西亚和中国等国家,宗教的整个历史和发展被镌刻在数英亩的寺庙建筑中,或从巨大的岩洞和悬崖峭壁中挖掘出来,构成了人类智慧史上最伟大的艺术和历史遗迹。在日本,数百座宏伟的园林静静地展现着佛教和神道教的辉煌。伊斯兰教禁止描绘人物形象,这意味着伊斯兰艺术的经典作品只能在建筑、书法以及繁复的花卉和几何图案中得到展现。梵语,意为“完美的语言”,是在印度发展起来的,以传承宗教传统。在履行这一职能的过程中,梵语也成为了一种伟大的文学语言,并且成为印欧语系语言之一,当今欧洲、伊朗、亚洲部分地区和美洲的大多数主要语言都源于梵语。

Buddhism and Hinduism have inspired temples, paintings, and sculpture of great sophistication, mystery, ferocity, and beauty. Particularly in India, these represent unparalleled fecundity and vitality. In some countries such as Indonesia and China, the entire history and development of the religions are carved over acres of temple structures or wrested from vast rock-cut caves and cliffs, constituting some of the greatest artistic and historical monuments in the history of human ingenuity. In Japan, hundreds of great gardens have been created to the quiet glory of Buddhism and Shintoism. An Islamic prohibition of representations of the human figure means that the classics of Islamic art are exhibited in architecture, calligraphy, and intricate floral and geometric patterns. Sanskrit, which means “perfect language,” was developed in India to preserve religious traditions. In fulfilling this function, Sanskrit also became a great literary language and one of the Indo-European languages from which have derived most of the major languages spoken today in Europe, Iran, parts of Asia, and the Americas.

在中国,八世纪诗人王维的诗歌是唐朝被称为黄金时代的原因之一。他的诗歌带有一些佛教色彩,但仅仅六十年后,寒山的诗歌就公开地转向了禅宗。在印度,《罗摩衍那》和《摩诃婆罗多》几乎囊括了所有孕育这个国家的宗教故事和神话。在日本,我们不妨提一提十一世纪的真言宗佛教小说《源氏物语》

In China, the poetry of the eighth-century figure Wang Wei is one of the reasons the Tang dynasty is called the golden age. It has some Buddhist undertones, but only sixty years later the poetry of Han Shan became overtly Zen Buddhist. In India the Ramayana and the Mahabharata embody nearly all of the religious stories and myths on which the country is nurtured. In Japan we might mention the Shingon Buddhist novel of the eleventh-century Tale of Genji.

不同信仰间的和平努力

Interfaith Efforts for Peace

尽管存在诸多差异,但不同宗教之间也存在着显著的相似之处。宗教领袖们试图通过创建由多个宗教派别组成的组织来巩固这些相似之处,致力于增进世界人民之间的相互理解。前国务卿玛德琳·奥尔布赖特在其著作《至高无上者与至高无上者》中指出,由于世界上许多重大冲突都源于宗教,因此跨宗教合作对于解决这些冲突至关重要。

Despite the many differences, significant similarities exist among religions. Religious leaders have attempted to build on these similarities by creating organizations of multiple religious denominations committed to creating better understanding among the world’s population. In her book, The Mighty and the Almighty, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright argues that because many of the major conflicts in the world have religious roots, interfaith religious efforts are central to solving them.

宗教与政府之间的潜在冲突

The Potential Conflict Between Religion and Government

前两节讨论了宗教对社会的积极作用。但宗教也扮演着一些人认为的负面角色。具体来说,它会破坏国家,并导致人们以宗教的名义互相争斗。十字军东征是基督教导致针对穆斯林战争的一个例子,而最近的圣战恐怖袭击则是伊斯兰教导致针对西方国家的袭击的一个例子。

The previous two sections discussed the positive elements of religion for society. But religion also plays what some consider negative roles. Specifically, it can undermine the state and lead people to fight others, all in the name of religion. The Crusades were an example of Christianity leading to war against Muslims, and recent jihad terrorist attacks are an example of Islam leading to attacks against Western countries.

基督教与民主政府已达成和平,宗教扮演着卢梭所认为的精神角色,即公民宗教的一种。教皇的法令不会损害西方政府,在同性恋权利或堕胎等问题上,天主教徒在政府中被视为遵循自身判断,而非教皇的法令。许多其他宗教也是如此。

Christianity and democratic government have made their peace with each other, with religion playing the spiritual role that Rousseau saw for it as a type of civil religion. The pope’s decrees do not undermine Western governments, and a Catholic in government is seen as following his or her own judgment rather than the pope’s decrees on issues such as gay rights or abortion. The same is true of many other religions.

然而,伊斯兰教的情况并非如此,伊斯兰原教旨主义构成了卢梭所预见的宗教对世俗政府的威胁。这些神学决策如何实施,将对中东乃至世界的未来产生重大影响。

This is not the case, however, with Islam, and Islamic fundamentalism poses the threat of religion to secular government that Rousseau foresaw. How those theological decisions play out will make a significant difference to the future of both the Middle East and the world.

学习回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 人类一直被死亡的必然性和生命的意义所困扰;他们对这些问题的兴趣使他们走向宗教。
  • Humans have always been troubled by the inevitability of death and the meaning of life; their interest in these issues has led them to religion.
  • 当今五大宗教是印度教、佛教、犹太教、基督教和伊斯兰教。
  • The five great religions of today are Hinduism Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
  • 在当今社会,宗教是道德价值观的源泉,对生活的各个方面产生着重大影响。
  • In current society, religion is a source of moral values, and it significantly influences all aspects of life.
  • 现代宗教面临着严峻的问题,宗教内部、宗教与宗教之间都存在着争论。
  • Modern religions face serious questions. Disputes arise both within religions and among religions.
  • 宗教在数千年来的社会中一直扮演着核心角色,并且很可能在未来数千年内继续扮演这一角色。
  • Religion has played a central role in society for thousands of years and is likely to do so for thousands of years in the future.
  • 如果宗教的影响力超出精神领域,那么它就会给世俗政府带来潜在的问题。
  • Religion presents a potential problem for secular government if religion extends its influence beyond the spiritual realm.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 反犹太主义(177)
  • anti-Semitism (177)
  • 一神论宗教(176)
  • monotheistic religions (176)
  • 宗教 (172)
  • religion (172)
  • 使徒(179)
  • Apostles (179)
  • 涅槃(172)
  • nirvana (172)
  • 什叶派(182)
  • Shiites (182)
  • 种姓制度(175)
  • caste system (175)
  • 屠杀 (178)
  • pogroms (178)
  • 锡克教徒(175)
  • Sikhs (175)
  • 公民宗教 (172)
  • civil religion (172)
  • 新教伦理(184)
  • Protestant ethic (184)
  • 逊尼派 (182)
  • Sunnis (182)
  • 圣战(183)
  • jihad (183)
  • 古兰经 (181)
  • Qur’an (181)
  • 托拉(176)
  • Torah (176)
  • 弥赛亚(177)
  • Messiah (177)
  • 宗教改革(180)
  • Reformation (180)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 为什么宗教自古以来就对人类有强烈的吸引力?
  2. Why has religion had a strong appeal to human beings from earliest times?
  3. 对西方人来说,印度教似乎是一种奇怪的信仰。为什么呢?
  4. To Westerners, Hinduism seems a strange faith. Why?
  5. 释迦牟尼乔达摩王子是如何创立佛教的?
  6. How did Prince Shakyamuni Gautama found Buddhism?
  7. 犹太教的独特之处是什么?
  8. What are the unique characteristics of Judaism?
  9. 为什么我们对耶稣教义的了解是间接的?
  10. Why is our knowledge of Jesus’ teachings indirect?
  11. 尽可能多地列出耶稣的更重要的教义。
  12. List as many as you can of the more important teachings of Jesus.
  13. 伊斯兰教是如何起源的?《古兰经》的起源是什么?
  14. How did Islam begin? What was the origin of the Qur’an?
  15. 伊斯兰教的五大支柱是什么?
  16. What are the Five Pillars of Islam?
  17. 原教旨主义伊斯兰教会带来哪些潜在问题?
  18. What potential problems does fundamentalist Islam pose?
  19. 解释伊斯兰教如何从七世纪到十八世纪从阿拉伯传播到世界其他地区。
  20. Explain how Islam spread from Arabia to other parts of the world from the seventh century to the eighteenth century.
  21. 说明伊斯兰教与犹太教或基督教的一些相似之处;并说明一些更重要的区别。
  22. State some of the similarities of Islam to Ju daism or Christianity; also state some of the more important differences.
  23. 为什么宗教信仰能够强化社会的道德伦理原则?它们又如何可能引发纷争和战争?
  24. Why are religious beliefs likely to strengthen the moral and ethical principles of a society? How are they likely to create dissension and war?
  25. 总的来说,宗教在当今社会中起到了促进融合还是分裂的作用?请为你的答案辩护。
  26. On balance, has religion been an integrative or divisive factor in today‘s society? Defend your answer.
  27. 为什么卢梭认为政府需要创建公民宗教?
  28. Why did Rousseau believe that governments needed to create a civil religion?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 请访问www.dalailama.com。什么是达赖喇嘛?现任达赖喇嘛是谁?
  2. Go to www.dalailama.com. What is a Dalai Lama? Who is the current Dalai Lama?
  3. 利用www.deadseascrolls.org.il/learn-about-the-scrolls/introduction上的信息,解释一下“死海古卷”是什么。你认为这项发现为什么重要?
  4. Using information found at www.deadseascrolls.org.il/learn-about-the-scrolls/introduction, explain what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. Why do you think this discovery is important?
  5. 根据www.knightstemplar.org/的介绍,圣殿骑士团究竟是谁?他们最初的使命是什么?
  6. Who were the Knights Templar, according to www.knightstemplar.org/? What was their original purpose?
  7. 请访问www.pbs.org/mormons/etc/genealogy.html。为什么摩门教徒对家谱如此感兴趣?
  8. Go to www.pbs.org/mormons/etc/genealogy.html. Why are Mormons so interested in genealogy?
  9. 请访问www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/sjl4soc-religmap/world-religions-map/#.WrOKMIhuZ yw 并打开世界宗教地图。在哪些国家,本土信仰比其他信仰更受欢迎?
  10. Go to www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/sjl4soc-religmap/world-religions-map/#.WrOKMIhuZ yw and launch the World Religions Map. In which countries is indigenous faith more popular than other faiths?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 奥尔布赖特,玛德琳,《强者与全能者》纽约:哈珀柯林斯,2006 年。
  • Albright, Madeline, The Mighty and the Almighty, New York: HarperCollins, 2006.
  • 巴斯,戴安娜,《宗教之后的基督教》,纽约:Harper-One,2012 年。
  • Bass, Diana, Christianity after Religion, New York: Harper-One, 2012.
  • 卡特,吉米,《信仰:所有人的旅程》,纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2018 年。
  • Carter, Jimmy, Faith: A Journey for All, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018.
  • 杜塞特,罗斯,《坏宗教:当我们成为异端之国时》,纽约:自由出版社,2012 年。
  • Douthat, Ross, Bad Religion: Flow We Became a Nation of Heretics, New York: Free Press, 2012.
  • 伊格曼,大卫,《萨姆:四十个来世故事》,纽约:万神殿,2009 年。
  • Eagleman, David, Sum: Forty Tales for the Afterlife, New York: Pantheon, 2009.
  • 埃文斯,迈克尔·D,《美国预言:古代经文揭示我们国家的未来》,田纳西州纳什维尔:华纳信仰出版社,2004 年。
  • Evans, Michael D., The American Prophecies: Ancient Scriptures Reveal Our Nations Future, Nashville, TN: Warner Faith, 2004.
  • 弗勒德,加文,《内心的真相:基督教、印度教和佛教的内在性历史》牛津:牛津大学出版社,2015 年。
  • Flood, Gavin, The Truth within: A History of Inwardness in Christianity, Hinduism, and Buddhism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
  • 格雷格,塞缪尔,《理性、信仰与西方文明的斗争》华盛顿特区:Gateway Editions,2019 年。
  • Gregg, Samuel, Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization, Washington, DC: Gateway Editions, 2019.
  • 琼斯,加雷斯(编辑),《宗教书》,纽约:DK 出版社,2013 年。
  • Jones, Gareth (editor), The Religions Book, New York: DK Publishers, 2013.
  • Kidwai,Abdur Ra​​heem,《古兰经的基本教义》,马克菲尔德:伊斯兰基金会,2015 年。
  • Kidwai, Abdur Raheem, The Quran’s Essential Teachings, Markfield: The Islamic Foundation, 2015.
  • 梅勒,诺曼和约翰·布法罗·梅勒,《大空虚:关于美国政治、性、上帝、拳击、道德、神话、扑克和内疚的对话》,纽约:国家图书出版社,2006 年。
  • Mailer, Norman, and John Buffalo Mailer, The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America, New York: Nation Books, 2006.
  • Mishra, Pankaj,《苦难的终结:佛陀在人间》,纽约:Farrar, Straus, & Giroux,2004 年。
  • Mishra, Pankaj, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2004.
  • 普罗瑟罗,斯蒂芬,《上帝不是唯一:统治世界的八个敌对宗教》,纽约:HarperOne,2011 年。
  • Prothero, Stephen, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions Tltat Run the World, New York: HarperOne, 2011.
  • 拉德福德,大卫,《宗教认同与社会变革;解释穆斯林世界中的基督教皈依》,阿宾登:劳特利奇,2015 年。
  • Radford, David, Religious Identity and Social Change; Explaining Christian Conversion in a Muslim World, Abingdon: Routledge, 2015.
  • 斯图尔特,马修,《廷臣与异教徒:上帝在现代世界的命运》康涅狄格州纽黑文:耶鲁大学出版社,2006 年。
  • Stewart, Matthew, The Courtier and the Heretic: Tire Fate of God in the Modern World, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006.
  • 沃伦,蒂什·哈里森,《普通礼仪》,伊利诺伊州唐纳斯格罗夫:大学出版社,2016 年。
  • Warren, Tish Harrison, The Liturgy of the Ordinary, Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2016.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第11教育

chapter 11Education

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-11

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-11

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 解释学校如何充当社会控制的代理者
  • Explain how schools serve as agents of social control
  • 简述美国教育的发展历史
  • Give a brief history of the development of US education
  • 讨论我们的学校系统面临的主要问题
  • Discuss the main problem facing our school system
  • 总结大学课程的演变
  • Summarize the evolution of the college curriculum
  • 解释为什么教育资助方式会导致教育不平等
  • Explain why the methods of funding education contribute to unequal education

你所做的每一件事都涉及,或者应该涉及学习或教育。教育是一个永无止境的过程,始于儿童的社会化,并贯穿整个成年生活。然而,在通常用法中,“教育”一词的含义更为有限。教育尤其指社会中较为成熟的成员为每一代新生传授群体的信仰、生活方式、价值观以及部分知识和技能所做的努力;它也指作为教学对象的人们学习的努力。

Everything you do involves, or should involve, learning or education. Education is a never-ending process that begins with the socialization of the child and continues through all of adult life. In common usage, however, the term education has a more limited meaning. Education refers especially to efforts, usually by the more mature members of a society, to teach each new generation the beliefs, the way of life, the values, and some portion of the knowledge and skills of the group; it also refers to efforts to learn on the part of those who are the objects of teaching.

在现代社会,需要学习的知识如此之多,以至于任何一个人最多只能掌握全部知识中的一小部分。因此,个人必须专注于特定领域。此外,在医学和工程等许多领域,所需的知识和技能成倍增加,不仅需要多年的学习时间,还需要在学院、大学和研究机构进行高度专业化的教育安排。因此,随着现代工业社会日益复杂,它越来越依赖于正规教育——即学校教育体系——来传承和发展其文化遗产。在美国,我们创建了一个为更多人提供机会的学校体系,其规模之大前所未有。2020年,美国公民和政府在教育上的支出超过1.5万亿美元。

In modern society, there is so much to learn that any one person can acquire, at most, only a very small part of the total knowledge. Therefore, individuals must specialize in particular fields. Furthermore, in many fields, such as medicine and engineering, the knowledge and skills required have multiplied until they not only take years to learn but also require highly specialized educational arrangements in colleges, universities, and research institutions. Thus, as our modern industrial society increases in complexity, it becomes more and more dependent on formal education—that is, on a system of schooling—both for transmitting and for developing its cultural heritage. In the United States, we have created a school system that provides more opportunities for more people than any the world has ever known. In 2020, US citizens and government spent more than $1.5 trillion on education.

人们非常担心我们用这些钱到底能得到什么。我们是否只是在给个人颁发证书,也就是说,用学校文凭来限制就业,而不是对人们进行适当的培训?为什么美国学生在国际上排名如此之低?我们应该提供“学校教育”——传授知识和技能——还是应该提供更广泛的教育和社会技能——教授批判性思维和多元文化主题?最后,我们如何才能事半功倍?

There is enormous concern about what we are getting for that money. Are we simply credentializing individuals, which means using school diplomas as a way to limit entry into jobs but not to train people appropriately? Why do US students rate so poorly when compared internationally? Should we be providing “schooling”—the teaching of knowledge and skill—or should we be providing broader educational and social skills—the teaching of critical thinking and multicultural topics? And, finally, how can we get more for less?

学校作为社会控制机构

Schools as Agencies of Social Control

朱迪思·马丁在其著作《礼仪小姐的完美育儿指南》中写道:“每个孩子生来都是无知的,只有通过两种东西才能变得文明:榜样和唠叨。” 从很多方面来说,榜样和唠叨就是教育,而教育使我们变得文明。更正式地说,社会通过教育将与群体生活方式相关的知识传递给个人。教育是社会控制的主要手段,而关于教育方式的决策在决定社会未来发展方向方面发挥着至关重要的作用。

In her book, Miss Manners’ Guide to Rearing Perfect Children, Judith Martin writes that “every child is born ignorant: and is civilized by two things, example and nagging.” In many ways, example and nagging are education, and it is education that civilizes us. Put more formally, it is through education that society transmits to individuals the knowledge dealing with the ways of life of the group. Education is a prime agency of social control, and decisions made about how to educate play crucial roles in deciding the direction society will take.

美国教育的双重压力

The Dual Thrust of US Education

在美国,这种社会化深深植根于学校教育过程,但为了培养个性,维护个人和学术自由——即学生和教师不受阻碍或审查地追求、讨论和教授知识的自由——这种努力有所调整。在其他国家,教育更注重灌输纪律;个性不被重视(参见“巴基斯坦的‘真正’教育”专栏)。例如,在日本和其他东方国家,学生面临严格的纪律约束,而且根据国际测试,他们学习得更多。

In the United States, such socialization is deeply embedded in the schooling process, but it is modified by attempts to foster individuality and to maintain individual and academic freedom—the freedom of students and teachers to pursue, discuss, and teach knowledge without hindrance or censorship. In other countries, education concentrates more on instilling discipline; individuality is frowned on (see the box on “ ‘Real’ Education in Pakistan”). For example, in Japan and in other Eastern countries students face strict disciplinary codes and, according to international tests, they learn more.

美国教育的双重导向——既注重学生的个性发展,又注重学生的社会化——导致我们对教育的态度出现矛盾。这种矛盾体现在很多方面。例如,一些教育理念强调团队合作和合作学习,而另一些则强调竞争和个人主义。这两种教育方式之间的矛盾不可避免地引发了争论:应该给予学生多少自由?应该由政府决定教学内容,还是应该由教师和家长在地方层面自行决定?私立学校应该获得政府资金补贴吗?如果获得补贴,它们是否应该受到政府的控制?私立学校一直争取政府提供不受控制的财政支持;而公立教育的倡导者则一直抵制这种做法。

The dual thrust of US education—both the development of individuality and the socialization of students—leads to a tension in our attitude toward education. The tension shows itself in many ways. For example, some educational philosophies emphasize teamwork and cooperative learning, whereas others emphasize competition and individualism. The tension between these two approaches inevitably leads to debates: How much freedom should students be given? Should government determine what is taught, or should teachers and parents decide at the local level? Should private schools be subsidized with government money? And if they are, should they be subject to government control? Private schools have pushed for government financial support without control; public education advocates have resisted such moves.

教育与美国民主

Education and US Democracy

教育之所以具有双重推动力,是因为教育体系不仅培养人才,也帮助他们做好融入社会的准备。它使我们人口中众多不同的群体紧密联系在一起。因此,教育是美国民主的基石。它通过以下四个方面发挥作用:

The dual thrust in education exists because the education system not only educates people but also prepares them to fit into society. It makes the many disparate parts of our population fit together. For that reason, education serves as a fundamental building block of US democracy. It does so in the following four ways:

国家委员会对我们学校的教学质量发表评论是一回事。而你站起来称科斯特洛先生为‘溜溜球’,则完全是另一回事。”

It’s one thing for the National Commission to comment on the quality of teaching in our schools. It’s another thing entirely for you to stand up and call Mr. Costello a yo-yo.”

© www.cartoonstock.com

© www.cartoonstock.com

  1. 通过教育广大公民识字,公共教育使他们能够在社区之外更有效地相互沟通,并通过阅读报刊、杂志和书籍了解政治和公共政策。这使得人们能够更明智地投票,更明智地选择领导人。
  2. By teaching the masses of our citizens to be literate, public education makes it possible for them to communicate with one another more effectively beyond the local community and to learn something of politics and public policy by reading newspapers, magazines, and books. This enables people to vote more intelligently and to choose leaders more wisely.
  3. 公立学校教导孩子们如何与不同背景的人相处。在许多地区,这些学校的学生来自不同的社会、经济、民族和种族背景。此外,学校也做出了巨大的努力,帮助有特殊学习、身体或情感问题的儿童融入主流社会。教室。虽然一起上学并不一定会让所有孩子都彼此相爱,但它确实有助于增进理解,并让所有群体更深刻地感受到他们共同的美国传统。
  4. The public schools teach children to get along with people of different backgrounds. In many areas, the students who attend these schools come from widely varied social, economic, national, and racial backgrounds. Also, extensive efforts have been made to integrate children who have special learning, physical, or emotional problems into the mainstream classrooms. Though going to school together will not necessarily make all children love one another, it does tend to create better understanding and to give all groups a keener sense of their common US heritage.
  5. 我们的公共教育资助体系减少了 各级教育机会的不平等。即使收入较低的民众,如今也能接受高中教育。许多人正在升入大学或技术及职业学校,部分原因是他们可以就读学费低廉的公立学校,部分原因是有很多政府贷款和助学金的机会。
  6. Our system of public support for education reduces inequalities of opportunity at all educational levels. The masses of our people, even at the lower income levels, are now receiving an education up through high school. Large numbers are going on to college or technical and professional schools, in part because they can attend publicly supported schools with low tuition and in part because there are many government loan and grant opportunities.
  7. 我们的公立学校体系使我们国家能够更有效地利用人力资源。在公立学校,我们发现许多学生拥有非凡的才能,其中不乏出身贫寒的学生。如果没有免费的公立学校,这些学生的才华大多数都无法得到发掘。一旦这些学生被发现,我们通常会鼓励和帮助他们最大限度地发挥潜能。因此,他们不仅自身拥有更充实的生活,而且作为学者、科学家或其他领域的领袖,他们也为国家的福祉做出了贡献。
  8. Our public school system has enabled us as a nation to make much more effective use of our human resources. In the public schools, we discover many students who have unusual ability, including those who come from unfavorable social backgrounds. The talents of most such students would never be brought to light if it were not for free public schools. Once discovered, these students often can be encouraged and helped to develop their capacities to the maximum. Thus, not only do they themselves lead fuller lives, but as scholars, scientists, or leaders in other fields, they also make a contribution to the welfare of the nation.

思想者,奥古斯特·罗丹著

The Thinker, by Auguste Rodin.

我们的公立学校系统绝不是一个完美的工具,无论是实现完全平等的教育机会,还是让我们最大限度地利用我们的人力资源,但它帮助我们朝着这两个目标迈出了一大步。

Our public school system is by no means a perfect instrument, either for achieving complete equality of educational opportunity or for enabling us to make maximum use of our human resources, but it has helped us to take great strides toward both of these objectives.

美国教育的发展

The Development of US Education

美国人对教育的兴趣可以追溯到最早的殖民时期。1620年,在马萨诸塞州普利茅斯建立第一个殖民地后,大约五十年间,除罗德岛州外,所有新英格兰殖民地都通过了立法,强制要求家长和学徒师傅确保他们的孩子不仅学习一门手艺,还学习阅读、写作和宗教等基本知识。不久之后,又通过法律,强制城镇建立小学。这些早期学校获得了一些公共支持,但也收取学费。

American interest in education goes back to earliest colonial times. Within about fifty years after the first settlement at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, all the New England colonies except Rhode Island had passed legislation making it mandatory for parents and the masters of apprentices to ensure that their charges learned both a trade and the elements of reading, writing, and religion. Before long, laws were passed making it compulsory for towns to establish elementary schools. These early schools received some public support, but they also charged tuition.

尽管民主制度起源于新英格兰,但所有民主公民至少应该学习阅读、写作和算术的理念却迟迟未能深入人心。我们共和国的缔造者并非真正意义上的民主。尽管《独立宣言》宣称人人生而平等,但我们早期的大多数领导人对普通公民能否明智地投票或从教育中获益的能力缺乏信心。在任何地方,投票权都因财产和其他资格限制在少数人手中,或许除了新英格兰以外,只有极少数人学会了读写。1

In spite of early beginnings in New England, the idea that all citizens of a democracy should be taught at least reading, writing, and arithmetic was slow to take hold. The founders of our republic were not thoroughly democratic in all senses of the word. Although the Declaration of Independence pronounced that all men are created equal, most of our early leaders had limited faith in the ability of the common citizen either to vote wisely or to profit from education. Everywhere, the right to vote was restricted to the few by property and other qualifications, and, except perhaps in New England, only a small minority of the people even learned to read and write.1

这种情况直到十九世纪后期才发生根本性变化,当时一种新的民主精神开始涌现。它渗透到整个国家,尤其是在阿勒格尼山脉以西新近定居的地区以及快速推进的西部边境沿线尤为强烈。

This situation did not change radically until well into the nineteenth century, when a new spirit of democracy began to be felt. It permeated the entire country but was especially strong in the recently settled regions west of the Alleghenies and along the rapidly advancing western frontier.

这股新的民主情绪促使安德鲁·杰克逊于1828年当选总统。杰克逊是边疆的产物,他代表着西部扩张时期的新民主。从杰克逊当选到内战爆发期间,公立基础教育已牢固确立。19世纪30年代,法国作家亚历克西斯·德·托克维尔访问美国,对民众日益增长的对公立教育的信仰和投入感到惊讶。在欧洲,教育仍然仅限于富裕阶层和神职人员。

This new surge of democratic sentiment brought about the election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1828. Jackson was a product of the frontier, and he represented the new democracy of the expanding West. In the period from Jacksons election to the Civil War, public elementary education became firmly established. In the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French author, visited the United States and expressed astonishment at the ever-growing belief in and commitment to public education. In Europe, education was still restricted to members of the wealthy class and the clergy.

到1860年,许多州都开设了由税收资助的小学。在此期间,一些公立高中也相继成立,但大多数中学

By 1860, tax-supported elementary schools had opened in many states. During these years, some publicly supported high schools were also established, but for the most part secondary

私立学院继续提供教育,这些学院继承了早期殖民地拉丁语法学校的教育。这些学院的数量迅速增加,但直到内战结束后的某个时候,公立高中的理念才开始得到广泛接受。

education continued to be provided by the private academies that had succeeded the early colonial Latin grammar schools. These academies increased rapidly in number, but not until sometime after the Civil War did the idea of publicly supported high schools begin to gain wide acceptance.

自1865年以来,美国的教育事业取得了惊人的发展。1870年,即内战结束五年后,就读小学的儿童人数不到700万,公立高中的入学人数也只有8万。一些儿童也就读私立小学和学院。2020年,公立和私立小学的总入学人数约为3600万,高中的入学人数约为1500万。1870年,只有不到一半的5至17岁儿童在校,每个儿童平均在校天数仅为50天。如今,几乎100%的5至17岁儿童每年至少上学几天,平均每年在校天数约为167天。由于新冠疫情导致学校停课和线上授课,降低了出勤率,使得实际出勤率难以计算,因此2020年的数据难以确定。据估计,实际出席人数比报告的数字低了 25%。

Since 1865, there has been a phenomenal expansion of education in this country. In 1870, five years after the end of the Civil War, the number of children attending elementary schools was fewer than seven million, and enrollment in public high schools was only 80,000. Some children were also attending private grade schools and academies. In 2020, total enrollment in elementary schools, public and private, was about thirty-six million, and enrollment in high schools was about fifteen million. In 1870, less than half the children five to seventeen years old were attending school, and the average number of days attended by each child was only fifty. Today, almost 100 percent of children from the ages of five to seventeen attend school at least some days every school year, and on average children attend school for about 167 days a year. The data in 2020 is difficult to be sure about, as school closings and virtual classes, due to the coronavirus, reduced attendance and made it difficult to calculate actual attendance. By some estimates, attendance was 25 percent lower than reported.

二十世纪教育最引人注目的扩张发生在学院和大学。1920年,我们所有高等教育机构的在校学生人数不到60万。到2014年,学院和大学的学生人数已增至约2100万。从2015年开始,随着人们对大学教育价值的质疑、学生是否值得贷款支付教育费用以及教育成本的上涨,大学入学人数开始下降。由于新冠疫情导致大学关闭和线上授课,2020年的大学入学人数下降幅度更大。

The most striking expansion of edu cation in the twentieth century was in the colleges and universities. In 1920, fewer than 600,000 students were enrolled in all of our institutions of higher learning. By 2014, the number of students in colleges and universities had increased to about twenty-one million. Starting in 2015, college enrollment started dropping as questions arose about the value of a college education, whether it was worthwhile for students to take out loans to finance their education, and as the cost of education rose. College closings and virtual classes due to the coronavirus made it fall even more in 2020.

图 11.1显示了 1965 年以来的总体趋势。直到 1970 年,各级学校的入学率都在上升。之后,在 20 世纪 70 年代,入学率开始下降。这一趋势很大程度上是由于二战婴儿潮时期的孩子们完成了学业。由于第二次婴儿潮(婴儿潮一代的子女),小学入学率在 20 世纪 80 年代末开始再次上升。随着第二次婴儿潮时期的孩子们长大,高年级的入学率也有所上升。尽管存在这些趋势,但直到最近,随着越来越多的学生进入大学深造,以及年纪较大的人认为他们需要接受更多教育才能找到或保住工作,大学教育和其他高等教育认证项目的数量一直在增长。

The overall trends since 1965 are shown in Figure 11.1. Until 1970, school enrollment rose at all levels. Then, in the 1970s, school enrollment began to decline. This trend was in large part caused by the completion of schooling of the children of the World War II baby boom. Enrollment in elementary schools started to rise again in the late 1980s due to the secondary baby boom (baby boomers’ children). As the children of this secondary boom grew older, the enrollment in later grades also rose. Through all these trends, until recently, college education and other post-secondary certification programs has risen as higher percentages of students went on to college and as older individuals decided they needed more education to find or keep their job.

图 11.11965 年至 2019 年各教学阶段学校入学人数(来源:美国国家教育统计中心)

Figure 11.1School enrollment by level of instruction, 1965 to 2019. (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)

美国学校系统的民主结构

Democratic Structure of the US School System

美国的学校结构与大多数国家的传统学校结构截然不同。第一次世界大战前,几乎所有欧洲国家都实行双元制,尽管此后有所变化,但欧洲学校仍然保留了这种双元制的大部分特征。双元在早期就将希望进入学院或大学的孩子与不希望进入学院或大学的孩子分开,并为每个群体提供不同类型的教育。在墨西哥,所有儿童在完成六年小学教育后,大约在十二岁时都要参加考试。成绩优异的学生会被送往特殊的“中学”或大学预科学校;其他学生在完成小学教育后会被送往职业、农业或技术学校。大多数欧洲国家也实行这种制度,尽管各国儿童被分开的年龄和年级各不相同。在德国,通常参加考试的年龄是十岁;在英国,是十二岁。

The school structure of the United States is quite different from what is traditional in most countries. Before World War I, nearly all European countries had a dual school system, and, in spite of some changes since, European schools still retain much of this dual character. A dual school system separates, at an early age, the children who expect to go on to a college or a university from those who do not, and provides a different type of education for each group. In Mexico, all children are given an exam at about the age of twelve, after completing six years of primary education. Students who do well are sent to special “secondary” or university preparatory schools; others are sent to vocational, agricultural, or technical schools after completing their elementary education. This holds true in most European countries, too, although the age and grade level at which children are segregated varies from country to country. In Germany, the age at which the examination is usually taken is ten; in Great Britain, it is twelve.

在美国,我们在十九世纪末发展了所谓的单一制。在单一制学校体系中,大多数孩子(除非中途辍学)就读同一类型的学校,学习同一门课程,最终在十二年后高中毕业。之后,他们就可以继续上大学了。继续教育的大门尽可能地始终敞开。

In the United States, we developed in the late nineteenth century a so-called unitary system. In a unitary school system, most children (unless they have dropped out along the way) attend the same type of school and follow a course of study that eventually leads to graduation from high school after twelve years. They are then ready, supposedly, to go on to a college or university. The door to further education is, so far as possible, kept open all along the line.

当然,并非所有课程都能帮助学生做好进入学院或大学的准备。即便如此,我们的教育体系在为学生提供进一步教育机会方面仍然相当成功,因为即使没有参加过大学预科课程的学生,通常也只需补修几门必修的入学课程,就能获得某种大学培训的资格。此外,许多大学对那些通过考试成绩或其他方式证明自己有能力在大学里取得优异成绩的学生,在入学要求上也比较灵活。

Of course, not all courses prepare students to enter a college or university. Even so, our school system is fairly successful in keeping open the doors to further educational advancement because the student who has not taken a college preparatory course can often qualify for some type of college training by merely making up a few required admission courses. Also, many colleges are flexible in their entrance requirements for students who give evidence, by test scores or otherwise, that they have the ability to do good work in college.

学校体系正规化

Formalization of the School System

像教育这样重要的机构很快就形成了正式的结构。到1880年,美国的学校结构演变为8-4-4系统——八年制小学、四年制高中和四年制大学。随着正式结构的发展,对这一结构的批评和演变也不可避免地随之而来。第一次世界大战后,对8-4-4系统的批评日益增多,最初导致许多社区建立了初中。这些学校接管了小学的七年级和八年级教育,以及高中的一年级教育。初中使得更早开始中学教育成为可能,并促进了新课程类型的引入。在20世纪70年代,这种演变仍在继续,小学

An institution as important as education quickly acquires a formal structure, and by 1880 the structure of schools in the United States had evolved into the 8-4-4 system—a graded eightyear elementary school, a four-year high school, and a four-year college. As inevitably as a formal structure developed, so did the criticism and evolution of that structure. Increasing criticism of the 8-4-4 system after World War I led initially to the establishment of junior high schools in many communities. These schools took over the seventh and eighth years of schooling from the grade schools and the first year from the senior high schools. The junior high school made it possible to begin secondary education earlier and facilitated the introduction of new types of courses. In the 1970s, the evolution continued, and elementary school was

小学教育缩短为五年,初中改为三年,高中延长为四年,使得5-3-4-4学制近年来在大多数社区普遍实行。

reduced to five years, junior high was changed to three years of middle school, and high school was extended to four years, making the 5-3-4-4 system common for most communities in recent years.

小学之前的教育也发生了变化。例如,在大多数美国社区,在一年级之前,在最底层增加了一年的幼儿园教育。后来,私立托儿所也开始普遍面向幼儿。近年来,还引入了针对贫困家庭儿童的项目。例如,“启蒙计划”(Head Start)是一项联邦项目,旨在促进三岁及以上学生的社交和智力发展。

Education prior to the grade school years also changed. For example, in most US communities a year of kindergarten was added at the bottom of the scale, preceding the first grade. Later still, private nursery schools became common for very young children, and in more recent years, programs have been introduced for young children from disadvantaged backgrounds. For example, Head Start is a federal program that seeks to enhance the social and intellectual development of students as young as three years old.

大学层面也发生了演变。一个很好的例子就是社区学院运动,它最初发展缓慢。20世纪20年代初,全国只有少数几所这样的学校。最早的公立社区学院通常由学区设立,作为高中的延伸。它们通常建在高中教学楼里,课程由高中教师授课,最好是接受过研究生教育的教师。正如一些教育家早先主张将大学的前两年课程下放到中学阶段一样,现在有些人认为社区学院是中学教育的延伸。然而,事实上,大多数早期社区学院的课程设置与四年制学院和大学的前两年课程设置非常接近,它们主要关注的是帮助学生在高三进入这些机构。到20世纪30年代末,社区学院的数量大幅增加,因为它们大多建立在大学教育较为成熟的地区。如果以前没有的话,它们会给许多年轻人提供更好的机会,让他们至少接受一些大学培训。

Evolution has also occurred at the college level. A good example is the community college movement, which developed slowly at first. In the early 1920s, only a few such schools existed throughout the country. The first public community colleges were usually established by school districts as a kind of extension of high school. Often, they were begun in high school buildings and their classes were taught by high school teachers, preferably those with some graduate school training. Just as some educators had argued earlier that the first two years of college should be moved down to the secondary level, some now regarded the community college as an extension of secondary education. In fact, however, most of the early community colleges followed rather closely the curricula of the first two years of the four-year colleges and universities, and they were chiefly concerned with preparing their students to enter such institutions in their junior year. By the end of the 1930s, the number of community colleges had substantially increased, and because most of them were established in areas where college education had not earlier been available, they gave many young people a better opportunity for getting at least some college training.

社区学院在美国教育中扮演着重要角色。 © PHOTO.ZOOMMER.RU/Alamy Stock Photo

Community colleges play an important role in US education. © PHOTO.ZOOMMER.RU/Alamy Stock Photo

二战后,为了满足日益增长的高等教育需求,私立和公立两年制大学的数量迅速增加。21世纪初,美国约有1650所两年制大学,总入学人数在770万至1050万之间,具体取决于衡量标准中包含的内容。新冠疫情使许多这样的学校陷入困境,其中一些学校关闭或正在考虑关闭。大约60%的社区大学学生是非全日制学生。社区大学的入学人数占所有黑人学生的45%,占所有西班牙裔学生的55%。

After World War II, in response to the increased demand for higher education, the number of two-year colleges, both private and public, rose rapidly. In the early 2000s, there were about 1,650 in the United States, with a total enrollment of 7.7 to 10.5 million, depending on what one includes within the measure. The Covid pandemic placed a number of these schools in serious trouble, and a number of them closed or were considering closing down. About 60 percent of all community college students are part-time. Community college enrollments account for 45 percent of all black students and 55 percent of all Hispanic students.

随着社区学院的增多和越来越多的学生涌入,它们的功能逐渐发生了变化,更接近于最初将其视为高中延伸的概念。如今,社区学院旨在满足学生的多样化需求,使他们能够从高中教育的延伸中受益。社区学院不再主要被视为为学生在最后两年进入四年制大学做准备的机构。它们仍然这样做,但其设计已经扩展,以满足其所在社区的需求。特别是对于那些想要省钱的学生来说,社区学院的学费,一分钱一分货,非常划算。最近提出的将社区学院学费降至零的提案将使其更加划算。各种类型的职业培训已经推出,其中一些是技术培训。提供培训汽车修理工、美发店经营者、销售人员、医务和牙科助理、实验室技术人员以及其他各种类型工人的课程。社区学院已成为一个致力于提供培训的机构,不仅要培养出更好的公民,还要满足我们的经济对大量训练有素的工人的需求,以及年轻人对既能带来满足感又能带来合理收入水平的工作的需求。

Gradually, as community colleges multiplied and more and more students crowded into them, their function changed to parallel more closely the initial concept of such colleges as an extension of high school. Now community colleges are colleges designed to meet the diverse needs of students who could benefit from some extension of their high school education. Community colleges are no longer regarded primarily as institutions preparing students to enter four-year colleges in the final two years. They still do this, but their design has been expanded to meet the needs of the community in which they are located. Especially for students who want to save money, community colleges, dollar for dollar, are a wonderful bargain. Recent proposals to reduce community college tuition to zero would make it even more of a bargain. Various types of vocational training have been introduced, some of them technical. Courses are offered to train auto mechanics, hair salon operators, salespeople, medical and dental assistants, laboratory technicians, and various other types of workers. The community college has become an institution that seeks to provide training that not only will produce better citizens but that also will meet the needs of our economy for a greater number of trained workers and the needs of young people for jobs that will yield both satisfaction and a reasonable level of income.

联合技术公司广告

United Technologies advertisement.

关于这种培训究竟应该是什么,目前仍有争议。一些人主张传统的学术研究,另一些人则倾向于职业导向。职业主义者认为,课程应该教授商业所需的技能。传统主义者则认为,学生可能会成为缺乏共同兴趣的、狭隘的职业专家。他们认为,特定工作技能可以在工作中学习,而大学的设立应该旨在教会人们思考和理解周围的世界。这场争论可能会持续下去。

Exactly what that training should be is subject to debate. Some advocate traditional academic studies and others favor a vocational focus. Vocationalists argue that courses should provide skills needed in business. Traditionalists argue that there is a danger of students becoming narrow job specialists without common interests. They feel that job-specific skills can be learned on the job and that colleges should be designed to teach people to think and understand the world around them. The debate is likely to continue.

近年来,私立营利性大学蓬勃发展,它们通常提供许多更适合在职学生时间安排的在线课程。2020年,约有110万名学生就读于营利性大学。这些营利性学校大量招收来自社区内通常未上过大学的学生,并帮助学生申请政府担保的学生贷款,这占其收入的90%。许多招收的学生尚未完成学业。

In recent years, private, for-profit universities have developed, which often offer many online courses that better fit working students’ schedules. In 2020, about 1.1 million students were attending for-profit colleges. These for-profit schools have recruited heavily from groups of students within communities that often have not gone to college, and have assisted students in applying for government-guaranteed student loans for 90 percent of their revenue. Many of the students they have recruited have not completed their

一些学生无法完成课程,或者即使完成了,也难以偿还贷款,因为他们的大学学位无法带来足够薪水的工作。在许多营利性院校,偿还贷款的学生人数明显不足一半。这些问题促使政府重新考虑其学生贷款政策,并向院校施加压力,确保招收的学生有能力完成学业,并且不会获得超出院校能力的承诺。为了应对这种滥用职权的行为,政府已经切断了对一些营利性院校学生的贷款,迫使一些院校关闭,另一些院校则缩减规模。

courses or, if they have done so, have found it difficult to repay their loans because their college degrees have not led to jobs that pay enough to do so. Significantly less than half of the students at many for-profit colleges are repaying their loans. These problems have led government to rethink its student loan policy and to put pressure on colleges to see that the recruited students are capable of doing the work and are not being promised more than the colleges can deliver. In response to abuses, it has cut off loans to students at a number of for-profit schools, forcing some to shut down and others to shrink.

审查学校系统

Examining the School System

了解美国教育体系的历史应该能让你更好地理解它的发展历程。美国教育体系是义务教育体系,通常为高中最后一年,直至18岁;此外,它还拥有覆盖面广泛的大学教育体系。此外,它还是一个耗资数千亿美元的昂贵体系。鉴于教育在现代社会中发挥的重要作用,人们对美国教育体系进行持续的审视也就不足为奇了:它如何提供服务,如何获得资金,教授哪些内容,以及它产生了哪些成果。这些持续不断的、旨在理解和改进教育体系的努力必然会带来变革。

The preceding history of the school system should give you a good sense of the US educational system and how it developed. It is a compulsory system through age eighteen, usually the last year of high school, and it is a broad-based college system. It is also an expensive system that costs hundreds of billions of dollars. Given the significant role of education in mod ern society, it should not be surprising that there is a constant examination of the school system: how it delivers its services, how it is paid for, what it teaches, and what results it produces. These continuing efforts to understand and improve the system will inevitably introduce changes.

技术变革与教学

Technological Change and Teaching

与其他机构一样,技术不仅改变了教学方法,也改变了教学内容。例如,随着计算机的发展,写作过程正在发生改变。现在有了可以纠正语法、拼写和文体错误的计算机程序。书籍已经转移到网上,而且可以通过计算机获取完整的在线书目,许多图书馆技能已不再必要;我们只需要知道如何使用相关的搜索程序。据预测,在本世纪的某个时候,计算机程序将能够熟练地将人们所说的单词和想法翻译成纸质文件,从而使目前在语法和写作课上教授的许多内容过时。这些变化这与计算器在数学上所取得的成就相类似,计算器几乎已经取代了心算或纸算的必要性。

As with other institutions, technology changes both the method of teaching and what needs to be taught. With the development of computers, for example, the process of writing is changing. Computer programs are now available that correct grammatical, spelling, and stylistic mistakes. Books have moved online, and with full online bibliographies available through computers, many library skills are no longer necessary; we simply need to know how to use the relevant search program. It is predicted that some time in this century computer programs will expertly translate onto paper the words and ideas that a person speaks into them, making obsolete much of what is now taught in grammar and composition classes. Such changes would parallel those already accomplished in math by calculators, which have made nearly obsolete the necessity to do arithmetic mentally or on paper.

长远的未来,唯有想象力才能限制我们。或许,随着大脑分析技术的进步,到2040年,教师和学校或许会过时,学生们只需将大脑连接到各种数据库,就能将知识从计算机内存直接转化为学生的记忆。对教师来说,幸运的是,那个时代尚未到来。

What the long-range future holds is limited only by our imagination. Perhaps with advances in the analysis of the brain, by 2040 teachers and schools may be obsolete, and students may simply hook up their brains to various data banks that directly translate knowledge from computer memory to student memory. Luckily for teachers, that time is not yet here.

私立学校和家庭学校

Private Schools and Home Schooling

私立学校一直是美国教育体系的一部分,其总入学人数约占所有学龄儿童的10%。私立或独立学校包括宗教学校、私立非宗派学校和家庭学校。21世纪初,美国约有3.5万所独立学校。在全美5200万学龄儿童中,约有500万就读于独立学校,约有180万在家接受教育,两者合计约占学校总入学人数的14%。

Private schools have always been a part of the US educational system, and their total enrollment includes about 10 percent of all schoolchildren. Schools defined as private or independent include religious schools, private nonsectarian schools, and home schools. In the early 2000s, there were about 35,000 independent schools. Of the fifty-two million school-age children in the country, about five million attended independent schools and about 1.8 million were home-schooled, together representing about 14 percent of total school enrollment.

许多私立学校都与宗教有关联。一些宗教学校的教学基于系统化的课程,例如德克萨斯州刘易斯维尔的“加速基督教教育公司”(Accelerated Christian Education, Inc.)发布的课程。据估计,宗教学校的学生人数超过一百万,其中约有一半采用“加速基督教教育”的教学方法,即使用练习册和程序化学习进行静默的个人学习。有数千种不同的练习册被编纂成“独特的基督教”风格,每个学生在一个学年里要学习多达六十五种不同的练习册。

A large number of private schools have religious affiliations. Instruction in some of the religious schools is based on systematized programs, such as the one published by Accelerated Christian Education, Inc., of Lewisville, Texas. The pool of students in religious schools is estimated to be more than one million, and about half of these use the Accelerated Christian Education method of silent, individual study using workbooks and programed studies. There are several thousand different workbooks compiled to be “distinctively Christian,” and each student goes through as many as sixty-five different workbooks in a school year.

这些系统价格低廉,易于安装。它们利用教堂空间,无需额外支付暖气、水电费和大多数设备费用。虽然它们对科学的呈现方式略有偏颇,科学与信仰相互交织,但它们在培养学生基本的阅读、数学和写作技能方面表现得相当不错。

These systems are inexpensive and easy to set up. They use church space and incur no additional expenses for heat, utilities, and most equipment. While they include biased presentations of science, where science and faith interact, they do reasonably well in providing students with basic reading, math, and writing skills.

尽管此类活动数量众多,且选择私立学校的人数也在迅速增加,但从统计角度来看,这些学校的学生总数仍然很少。有人推测,这种学校教育可能会导致学生孤立、兴趣狭隘、社交能力低下以及疏离主流。这些结论尚未经过无党派研究人员的检验。公立学校的研究人员发现了问题,而私立学校的研究人员则发现了成功。当研究结果反映研究人员的初步观点时,它们提供的客观证据很少。希望未来能够有更多独立的分析。

Despite the significant amount of such activity and the fact that the choice of independent schools is growing rapidly, the total number of students in and from these schools is still statistically small. There is speculation that such schooling may lead to isolation, narrow interests, poor socialization, and alienation from the mainstream. These conclusions have not been subjected to testing by non-partisan researchers. Public school researchers find problems; private school researchers find success. When research results reflect the beginning views of the researchers, they provide little in the way of objective evidence. Hopefully, in the future, there will be more independent analysis.

私立学校的替代方案是在家教育,即父母在家教育自己的孩子。随着人们对公立学校的担忧日益加剧,在家教育也日益受到关注,但这种模式仍然并不普遍。

An alternative to private schools is home schooling, in which parents teach their own children at home. As concern about public schools has increased, so, too, has home schooling, but it remains uncommon.

特许学校、私有化和学校财政问题

Charter Schools, Privatization, and the Problem of School Finance

好的学校教育需要花钱,因此,支付教育费用的纳税人往往试图少付钱,这并不奇怪。从历史上看,美国的教育费用主要来自地方财产税——对学区内的土地、房屋和企业征收的税。由于许多业主没有孩子上学,其中一些人反对提高财产税。这导致社区周期性地发生纠纷,导致选民无法通过学校预算。地方对学校的融资带来的第二个影响是不同学区的税负存在显著差异。拥有大量有价值应税财产的学区发现,与有价值应税财产较少的学区相比,它们可以以低得多的人均税率来支持学校。其结果是学校可用资金存在显著差异。

Good schooling costs money, and it is not surprising that the taxpayers who pay for it often try to pay less. Historically, education in the United States has been paid for largely by local property taxes—taxes on land, houses, and businesses in the school district. Because many property owners do not have children in school, some of them object to increases in property taxes. This leads to periodic commu nity dissension and failure of the voters to pass school budgets. A second effect that local financing of schools has is significant differences in tax burdens among school districts. School districts with large amounts of valuable taxable property find that they can support schools with a much lower tax rate per property owner than can districts with little valuable taxable property. The result is significant differences in availability of funds for schools.

这种资助方式的不公平性已在法庭上受到抨击,一些州面临法律强制要求,必须通过制定某种方法来平衡税收负担和可用资源,从而改变学校的财政方式。例如,密歇根州取消了学校财产税,并用销售税取而代之。其他州也在进行类似的改革。

The inequity in this funding method has come under attack in the courts, and a number of states face legal mandates to change school finance methods by instituting some method of equalizing tax burdens and available resources. In Michigan, for example, the school property tax was eliminated and replaced with a sales tax. Other states are making similar changes.

改变这些融资方式的尝试引发了更多争议,并引发了要求将教育私有化的呼声,使其不再由政府提供,而是由私营营利性企业提供。根据典型的私有化方案,学生将获得一张价值 5,000 美元的代金券,他们可以用它来就读任何他们想上的学校。倡导者们推动此类私有化计划使用“择校”一词,因为学生可以选择学校。反对者认为私立学校会“撇去精华”,选出容易上课的学生,而把难上课且学费昂贵的学生留在公立学校。他们还认为,这将显著改变公立学校的社会化功能,从而改变美国社会的性质。随着唐纳德·特朗普总统 2016 年当选,联邦政府开始推动学校私有化。他任命私有化的坚定支持者贝琪·德沃斯为教育部长,她一直倡导和鼓励学校的选择和竞争。当特朗普在 2020 年输给拜登时,推动私立学校的步伐放缓,公众也开始反对。

Attempts to change these financing methods have led to more dissension and to calls for privatizing education so that it is no longer supplied by government, but is instead supplied by private, for-profit businesses. Under the typical privatization plan, students are given a voucher worth, say, $5,000, which they can use to attend whichever school they want. Advocates push for such privatization programs using the phrase “school choice,” because students would have a choice of schools. Opponents of such schemes argue that the private schools would “skim the cream,” taking the easy-to-educate students and leaving the difficult and expensive-to-educate students in public school. They also argue that it would significantly change the socialization function of the public schools and, hence, change the nature of US society. With President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the federal government started to push schools to privatize. He appointed a strong supporter of privatization, Betsy DeVos, as Secretary of Education and she has advocated and encouraged school choice and competition. When Trump lost to Biden in 2020, the push toward private slowed, and there was a push back from the public.

优秀的教师是学校成功的关键。

© Wavebreakmedia Ltd FUS1903/Alamy Stock Photo

Good teachers are a key to success in school.

© Wavebreakmedia Ltd FUS1903/Alamy Stock Photo

许多州已通过一项倡议,即特许学校——一种基于个人或团体(通常是教师、家长和社区其他成员)与其资助方(通常是地方或州教育委员会)之间特许状的去中心化学校。特许学校旨在替代私立学校和公立学校。尽管特许学校主要由家长和教师控制,但其资金通常由所在州提供。约10%的特许学校由营利性企业运营。特许学校的结构旨在最大限度地减少官僚主义,并通过授权教师和家长制定课程来促进创新的学习方法。问责制通过绩效测试来确定特许状是否需要续签。在接下来的几年里,这些学校将受到密切关注,以便衡量其开设课程的质量和广度。

One initiative that has passed in many states is charter schools—decentralized schools based on a charter between an individual or group (usually teachers, parents, and others in a community) and its sponsor (usually the local or state school board). Charter schools are designed as an alternative to private and public schools. Although largely controlled by parents and teachers, their financing usually is provided by the state in which they are located. About 10 percent of charter schools are run by for-profit businesses. The structures of charter schools are designed to minimize bureaucracy and promote innovative approaches to learning by empowering teachers and parents to create the curriculum. Accountability is achieved by performance tests that determine whether the charter is renewed. Over the next few years, these schools will be watched closely so that the quality and breadth of the programs that emerge can be measured.

佛罗里达州实施了最为全面的改革之一,其改革包括:(1) 开始根据学生在阅读、数学和科学方面的熟练程度和进步情况对学校进行评分;(2) 取消了社会晋升制度——即使学生尚未掌握晋升所需的技能,也可以让他们升入下一个年级;(3) 引入绩效工资;(4) 给予家长更多选择;(5) 建立了新的教师资格认证方法,为教师职业发展提供了更多途径。虽然这些改革取得了一些积极成果,但也带来了一些问题,研究人员对该计划的评估几乎总是反映出他们之前的观点。

One of the most comprehensive reforms was instituted by Florida where they (1) started grading their schools based on student proficiency and progress in reading, math, and science; (2) eliminated social promotion—the practice of letting students move to the next grade even though they have not mastered the skills needed to advance; (3) introduced merit pay; (4) allowed parents much greater choice; and (5) set up new methods of teacher certification to allow alternative ways for someone to become a teacher. While these reforms showed some positive results, the reforms also introduced problems, and researchers’ assessments of the program almost invariably reflect their prior views.

教科书

Textbooks

自20世纪20年代系统测试作为一种研究工具发展起来后,教育测试人员得出结论,小学课程太难,于是将矛头指向了教科书。从那时起,小学教科书的严谨性就越来越低。长词、复杂的语法结构以及连接词都不受重视。据州首席学校官员委员会教科书专家哈丽特·伯恩斯坦称,八年级之前,大多数美国教科书中都没有出现“because”这个词。一些人认为,这些简单的教科书之所以还在继续使用,是因为工作过度、训练不足的教师需要一些易于理解的教学材料。

After systematic testing had been developed as a research tool beginning in the 1920s, educational testers reached the conclusion that the elementary curriculum was too hard, and they targeted the textbook. Since then, textbooks for elementary schools have tended to become less and less rigorous. Long words and complex grammatical constructions are frowned on, as are connective words. According to Harriet Bernstein, textbook expert of the Council of Chief State School Officers, the word because does not appear in most US schoolbooks before the eighth grade. Some believe these simple books continue to be used because overworked, undertrained teachers need something easy to teach from.

各种种族、宗教、政治和其他压力团体的主张使情况更加复杂。例如,一些营养学家认为精制糖有害健康,他们在一些州成功地从儿童教科书中删除了大部分关于蛋糕和糖果的内容。有时,这样做的结果可能出乎意料;在一个案例中,这些删除导致了一些关于一个孩子过生日却没有生日蛋糕的故事。

The situation is complicated by the claims of various ethnic, religious, political, and other pressure groups. For instance, nutritionists who believe that refined sugar is a health hazard have succeeded in some states in having removed from children’s textbooks most references to cake and candy. The results can sometimes be unintended; in one case, these omissions resulted in stories about a child having a birthday—with no birthday cake.

高中和大学教科书都有一些相同的特点。打开几本教科书,站得离书远点,这样你就看不到正文了:你会发现它们看起来都很像。常用的策略包括频繁使用副标题、图表和图片,在页面中间添加方框以缓解文字块,以及添加章节摘要,让学生无需阅读正文就能了解章节要点。出版商需要这些技巧,因为这些技巧能提高销量,教科书编写者也乐于接受。

Textbooks developed for high schools and colleges have some of the same characteristics. Open several and stand back so that you cannot read the print: You will find that they all tend to look alike. Popular strategies include frequent subheads, charts and pictures, boxed material appearing in the middle of a page to relieve the blocks of print, and chapter summaries that enable the student to get the gist of the chapter without reading the main text. Publishers demand these devices because that is what sells, and textbook writers comply.

在我们看来(没错,教科书作者确实有自己的看法),教科书太过溺爱学生了。我们把学习弄得太简单,这样学生就不用思考了。然而,我们还是溺爱(这个词可能不太常用,因为它太不寻常了),虽然比其他教科书作者的溺爱程度要轻一些,因为老师和出版商认为,一本真正发人深省(因此也痛苦)的教科书不会出版,也不会被阅读。

In our view (yes, it is true that textbook authors have views), textbooks coddle students too much. We make learning too easy, so students don’t have to think. Nevertheless, we coddle (a word that probably shouldn’t be used because it is too unusual), although less than other textbook writers do, because teachers and publishers say that a truly thought-provoking (and therefore painful) textbook would not get published and would not get read.

辍学者

School Dropouts

当教育变得过于痛苦时,学生就会辍学。根据美国人口普查局的数据,一些大城市多达 50% 的高中生在毕业前辍学。过去几十年来,辍学率有所下降,从 1970 年代全国约 14% 下降到 2019 年的约 6%,尽管由于新冠疫情,2020 年辍学率再次上升。西班牙裔和黑人的辍学率仍然较高,分别为 9.2% 和 6.5%,而白人的辍学率为 4.5%。(黑人 6% 的辍学率可能看起来不错,但这部分是因为许多黑人男性青少年最终入狱,不被算作上学或辍学。)实际从正规学校辍学的学生人数更多,但许多学生重返学校并获得 GED(普通教育发展)学位或同等学历。

When education becomes too painful, students drop out. According to data compiled by the US Bureau of the Census, as many as 50 percent of high school students in some major cities drop out before graduating. The dropout rate has fallen somewhat over the past decades, from about 14 percent nationwide in the 1970s to about 6 percent in 2019, although, because of Covid it rose again in 2020. It remains higher for Hispanics, at about 9.2 percent, and blacks, at about 6.5 percent, than it is for whites, at 4.5 percent. (This 6 percent dropout rate for blacks may look good, but this is partly because so many black male teenagers have ended up in jail and are not counted as being eligible for school or as dropping out.) The number of students actually dropping out of regular school is higher, but many return to school and earn a GED (General Educational Development) degree or its equivalent.

21世纪初,约有63%的辍学生在八年内获得了普通教育发展证书(GED)。2014年,由于GED考试重新制定,难度大幅提升,获得GED的学生人数急剧下降。为此,一些州推出了GED的替代考试,包括TASC(中学毕业评估考试)和HiSET(高中同等学历考试)。

In the early 2000s, about 63 percent of dropouts obtained a GED within eight years of dropping out. In 2014 the number of students getting GEDs fell precipitously when the GED exams were reworked and made much more difficult. In response a number of states created alternatives to the GED. These include the TASC (Test Assessing Secondary Completion) and the HiSET (High School Equivalency Test).

为应对辍学问题,已建立了许多项目。例如,纽约市通过电话联系高中辍学生,试图说服他们重返校园。其他地区则尝试了灵活的上课时间安排、勤工俭学计划以及识别和咨询项目。加州一所学校开展了“现金换课”项目,为学生支付学费。

A number of programs have been established to deal with dropouts. In New York City, for example, dropouts from high school are contacted by phone in an attempt to persuade them to return to school. Other areas have tried flexible school scheduling, work-study plans, and identification and counseling programs. In a cash-for-class project, one California school paid students to attend school.

辍学不仅对学生个人,也对整个社区都是个问题。教育与犯罪呈反比关系,从长远来看,平均教育水平越高,犯罪率越低。高中辍学也会影响就业能力;辍学生的失业率大约是高中毕业生失业率的两倍。

Dropping out is a problem not only for the individual student but also for the entire community Education has an inverse relationship to crime and, in the long run, the higher the average level of education, the lower the crime rate. Dropping out of high school also affects one’s ability to get a job; the unemployment rate among dropouts is roughly twice as high as the unemployment rate for high school graduates.

多元文化主义、合作学习和制度公平

Multiculturalism, Collaborative Learning, and Institutional Fairness

人们的学习方式各不相同,不同群体对不同学习环境的反应也不同。我们当前的学习环境很大程度上被韦尔斯利学院女性研究中心的教育专家佩吉·麦金托什称为“赢家杀手式竞争”,她认为这种竞争不利于某些少数族裔文化和女性背景的发展。她认为,当前的体系偏向白人男性,没有提供协作学习的环境。在这种环境中,学生学会合作,互相帮助,共同进步,而不是与他人竞争,最终被打败。

People learn in different ways, and various groups respond differently to alternative learning environments. Much of our current learning environment is what Peggy McIntosh, an education specialist at the Center for Research on Women at Wellesley College, calls “winner-killer competitive,” which she argues is not conducive to some minority cultures’ and womens backgrounds. The current system, she argues, is biased toward white males and does not provide a collaborative learning environment, in which students learn to work together, helping each other excel rather than competing with others to beat them down.

歧视发生的方式可能很微妙,尽管有时,当被指出时,它们并不那么微妙。例如,新泽西州的律师加里·米切尔将他的孩子送到一所进步学校,他对孩子幼儿园班级颁发的奖项感到震惊。一个性别的学生获得的奖项是最佳思想者、最勤奋的学习者、最具想象力的学习者、最热情的学习者、最具科学精神的学习者、最好的朋友、最佳个性的学习者、最勤奋的学习者以及最具幽默感的学习者。另一个性别的奖项是全能甜心、最甜美的个性、最可爱的个性、最佳分享者、最佳艺术家、最宽容的心、最佳礼貌的学习者、最佳帮助者和最具创造力的学习者。我们让你自己去弄清楚哪个性别获得了哪些奖项。

The ways in which discrimination occurs can be subtle, although sometimes, when pointed out, they are not so subtle after all. For example, Gary Mitchell, a New Jersey attorney, sent his child to a progressive school and was struck by the awards given out in the child’s kindergarten class. The awards given to students of one gender were for best thinker, most eager learner, most imaginative, most enthusiastic, most scientific, best friend, best personality, hardest worker, and best sense of humor. The other gender’s awards were for all-around sweetheart, sweetest personality, cutest personality, best sharer, best artist, biggest heart, best manners, best helper, and most creative. We leave it to you to figure out which gender got which list of awards.

麦金托什的理论备受争议,但其部分内容已在所谓的多元文化主义运动中融入主流教育实践。多元文化主义运动旨在使社会制度对所有种族和文化群体保持公正。多元文化主义运动的另一个例子是尤里·特雷斯曼对黑人大学数学专业学生的研究。特雷斯曼是德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的数学教授,他深入研究了黑人学生在大学数学专业中所占比例过低,而亚裔学生所占比例过高的原因。他与多位社会科学家一起开展研究,试图找出原因。他发现,原因与能力无关。他所观察的群体(加州大学伯克利分校的学生)在高中和标准化考试中数学能力相当。差异更多地在于项目的制度结构。他发现,亚裔学生倾向于在非正式的社交群体中一起解决问题,因此学习数学成为他们社交互动的一部分。另一方面,他发现黑人学生的社交活动并不包含任何此类互动,因为他们会被吸引到没有其他数学专业学生的黑人文化中心。因此,他们无法体验到亚裔学生所经历的那种协作学习。他着手改变这种状况,并成功地开展了协作学习练习,与其他制度改革相结合,显著提高了德克萨斯大学黑人数学专业学生的比例。

McIntosh’s theories are highly controversial, but aspects of them have made their way into mainstream educational practices in what is called the multiculturalism movement, the movement to make social institutions unbiased with respect to all ethnic and cultural groups. Another example of this multicultural movement is Uri Treisman’s work with black college math majors. Treisman is a mathematics professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied in depth the reasons why black students made up a disproportionately small number of college math majors, whereas Asian students made up a disproportionately large number. Together with a number of social scientists, he conducted research to find out why. He found that the cause had nothing to do with ability. The groups he was looking at (students at the University of California at Berkeley) had equal ability in math in their high schools and on standardized tests. The difference was more in the institutional structure of the program. He found that Asian students tended to work on problems together in informal social groups, so studying math became part of their social interaction. On the other hand, he found that black students’ social activities did not include any such interaction, as they were drawn to black cultural centers that did not include other math majors. Thus, they did not experience the type of collaborative learning that the Asian students did. He set about to change that and successfully instituted collaborative learning exercises that, together with other institutional reforms, significantly increased the percentage of black math majors at the University of Texas.

学习环境也会在其他方面显著影响教育成果。哈佛大学社会科学教授罗兰·弗莱尔发现,经收入调整后,黑人儿童在幼儿园阶段的表现与白人儿童相当,但到了三年级,他们就落后了。他检验了文化压力阻碍黑人学生学习的假设。这种文化将“学习”视为“白人行为”。他找到了强有力的证据支持这一假设,并提出了一系列政策建议来抵消这种文化压力。

Learning environment can significantly affect educational outcomes in other ways as well. Harvard social science professor Roland Fryer has found that, adjusted for income, black children preform equally well as white children through kindergarten, but by third grade they fall behind. He tested the hypothesis that cultural pressures deterred black students from studying. The culture viewed “studying” as “acting white.” He found strong support for that hypothesis and suggested a variety of policy suggestions to offset that cultural pressure.

美国学校有多好?

How Good Are US Schools?

关于教育体系,我们或许可以提出的最重要的问题是:它是否提供了优质教育?学生们是否接受了优质教育?答案并非一致。许多人认为我们的学校并不成功;成本过高,成果却寥寥无几。学生们毕业时甚至不具备阅读、写作、拼写和算术的基础知识。许多实证研究结果表明情况确实如此。例如,在四年级学生成绩的国际比较中,美国学生在26个国家的比较中处于中等水平。到了八年级,他们已经跌到了倒数三分之一;而到了毕业时,他们又跌到了最低点。

Probably the most important questions we can ask about our educational system are: Does it deliver and are students receiving a good education? The answers are not a unanimous yes. Many argue that our schools are not succeeding; they cost too much and achieve too little. Students are graduating without knowing the fundamentals of reading, writing, spelling, and arithmetic. A number of empirical measures suggest that this is the case. For example, in international comparisons of student achievement in the fourth grade, US students were in the middle of an international comparison of twenty-six nations. By the eighth grade, they had fallen to the bottom third; and by graduation, they had fallen to the bottom.

尽管教育投入有所增加,但情况似乎并未改善。用于衡量学生是否做好进入大学的准备的学术能力倾向测试(SAT)和美国大学入学考试(ACT)的成绩表明,只有25%至43%的学生做好了准备。近年来,SAT考试各部分的平均成绩都在下降。从2011年到2016年,批判性阅读平均分数从497分降至494分;数学平均分数从514分降至508分;写作平均分数从489分降至482分。因此,学生们对大学的准备程度比以前更低了。2016年,SAT考试进行了重新设计,因此不同时期的成绩不再具有可比性。现在的测试只包括数学和阅读,新考试的平均分数更高——2021 年阅读为 530 分,数学为 520 分——但这种提高是由于使用了不同的标准化过程,而不是学生阅读或数学能力的提高。

Despite increases in the amount of money put into education, the situation does not seem to be improving. Scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the American College Testing (ACT) exams, which are used to measure whether students are ready to enter college, suggest that only between 25 percent and 43 percent of students are prepared. Average SAT scores have been falling in recent years in all parts of the exam. From 2011 to 2016, average Critical Reading scores fell from 497 to 494; average Mathematics scores fell from 514 to 508; and average Writing scores fell from 489 to 482. So students are even less prepared for college than they were. In 2016, the SAT exams were redesigned so the results are no longer comparable over time. The tests now include only math and reading, and the average scores on these new exams are higher—530 for reading and 520 for math in 2021—but that increase is due to the different normalization process used, not to any improvement in students’ reading or mathematics ability.

教育工作者为我们学校的不足之处辩解五花八门。他们认为,如今许多学生不想学习,也几乎无力掌握传统的学术科目。因此,教师面临着降低标准的压力。不管一个班级的成绩有多差,给50%的学生不及格似乎不合理;自然,许多校长和家长会责怪老师。此外,如今受教育程度低的青少年很难找到工作。如果他们辍学,可能会流落街头,惹上麻烦。因此,在许多学校,大多数边缘学生即使成绩不佳也能获得晋升。

Educators justify the shortcomings in our schools in a variety of ways. They argue that many modern-day students do not want to learn and have little ability to master traditional academic subjects. Teachers are then under pressure to lower standards. It seems unreasonable to give failing grades to, say, 50 percent of a class, no matter how poor it is; naturally, many principals and parents would blame the teacher. In addition, teenagers with little schooling now have difficulty getting jobs. If they leave school, they may just wander the streets and get into trouble. So, in many schools, most marginal students are promoted regardless of their lack of achievement.

一些学校推行社会升级政策,强化了学生根据成绩低下或毫无成就而升入不同年级的倾向。这意味着,无论学生是否达到最低学习标准,都应与同班同学一起升级。该政策的理论是,出于社会原因,最好让学生留在同龄人中,无论他们是否学到东西,并且不惜一切代价避免被贴上失败者的标签。然而,以此为依据的升级并无多大帮助。低年级没有学过基础数学的学生,如果必须上高年级的数学课,就会感到非常沮丧或漠不关心。因此,所谓的教育只不过是敷衍了事地上课而已。这些学生不仅会给老师带来麻烦,妨碍其他学生学习,而且他们往往比被留级更强烈地感受到自己的不足。无论在

The tendency to pass students from grade to grade on the basis of little or no achievement is strengthened in some schools by the policy of social promotion. This means promoting students along with their classmates regardless of whether they reach a minimum standard of achievement in their studies. Tire theory is that it is better for social reasons to keep them with their own age group, whether they learn anything or not, and at all costs to avoid stigmatizing them as failures. However, promotion on this basis does not help matters much. Students who have not learned elementary mathematics in the lower grades become completely frustrated or indifferent if they must attend math classes in the upper grades. Thus, so-called education consists only of going through the motions of attending classes. Not only do these students become a problem to the teachers and hinder the other students from learning, but they also often feel their own inadequacy more keenly than if they had been held back. Whether under

在这种情况下,学生留在同龄人群体中或继续上学是否能获得任何好处,这一点尚有疑问。如果要解决这个问题,我们或许必须在孩子早期就开始着手解决。

these conditions students gain anything by remaining with their own age group or by staying in school at all is open to question. If this problem is to be solved, we probably must address it early in a child’s life.

追求卓越

The Search for Excellence

为了回应对美国教育体系的诸多批评,美国政府出台了一些措施,以遏制批评者所称的“平庸潮流”。这些改革主要集中在州和

In response to many criticisms of the US educational system, measures to stem what critics call a tide of mediocrity have been instituted. The reforms have been mostly on the state and

地方一级,并提高了工资标准,延长了上课时间,提高了教师资格标准,赋予教师更多的责任,并在各个年级和科目中建立了频繁的标准化测试,以便以可衡量的方式监测学生的表现。

local level and have increased salary scales, lengthened the school day, improved teacher certification standards, given teachers more responsibility, and put in place frequent standardized testing in a variety of grades and subjects so that students’ performance will be monitored in a measurable way.

教育主要由州和地方两级运营和资助,但美国联邦政府的参与度日益提高。联邦政府定期通过法律和举措,通过制定标准和引入绩效衡量标准来实现教育的卓越。例如,2001年,国会通过了《不让一个孩子掉队法案》,这项全面的改革重新定义了联邦政府在K-12教育中的作用。该法案基于四项原则:加强问责制、增加地方控制、扩大家长选择权以及强调行之有效的教学方法。该计划最昂贵、最具争议的方面是它对标准化考试的强调。一方认为高风险考试定义了问责制,另一方则认为它扼杀了更广泛的学习,迫使教师为了考试而教,而不是为了理解而教。关于该计划的争论仍在继续,其有效性尚无定论。

Education is primarily run and paid for on the state and local levels, but increasingly the US federal government has been becoming involved. Periodically, it passes laws and initiatives designed to achieve excellence in education by setting standards and introducing performance measures. For example, back in 2001, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act, a sweeping reform that redefined the federal government’s role in K-12 education. It was based on four principles: stronger accountability, increased local control, expanded parental options, and emphasis on proven teaching methods. The most expensive and controversial aspect of this program was its emphasis on standardized testing. One side saw high-stakes tests as defining accountability, the other as stifling broader learning and forcing teachers to teach to a test, not to teach for understanding. The debate about this program is ongoing, with no definitive results about its effectiveness.

大学课程的变化

Changes in the College Curriculum

直到十九世纪中叶,高等教育主要学习古代语言、数学、哲学和神学。现代外语和社会科学也受到一些关注,但这些学科的重要性较低。然而,内战之后,课程设置开始体现出科学、技术和其他知识领域新发展的影响。随着入学人数的增加和学生兴趣的日益多样化,科学、技术和职业培训越来越多地被引入大学阶段。学习科目和课程数量不断增加,以至于任何学生都无法选择全部课程中的一小部分。

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, higher education consisted chiefly of learning the ancient languages, mathematics, philosophy, and theology. Some attention was also given to modern foreign languages and the social sciences, but these held a place of less importance. After the Civil War, however, the curriculum began to show the effects of new developments in science, technology, and other fields of knowledge. As enrollments increased and the interests of students became more and more diverse, scientific, technical, and vocational training were increasingly introduced at the college level. Subjects and courses of study multiplied until it became impossible for any student to take more than a very small portion of the total offerings.

选修制度的发展为了解决这个问题,学校采用了选修制度。这允许学生在一定限制下自行选择学习课程。但结果并不总是令人满意,因为学生常常选择一些杂乱无章、互不相关的科目,同时他们也常常完全忽略了人类知识的一些基本领域。

The Development of the Elective System To meet this problem, the elective system was adopted. This permitted students, with some restrictions, to determine their own courses of study. But the results were not always satisfactory, for often students chose a hodgepodge of unrelated subjects, and at the same time they frequently missed entirely any acquaintance with some of the basic fields of human knowledge.

选修制度的缺陷导致了两种发展。首先,大学开始要求学生主修某一知识领域,并选修该领域相当一部分的课程。与此同时,他们开始要求学生以某种方式分散学习一些课程,使他们至少熟悉几个基本知识领域。“通识教育”一词开始与试图赋予学生广阔的知识面联系在一起。

The shortcomings of the elective system led to two developments. First, colleges began to require students to major in one field of knowledge by taking a substantial proportion of their work in this field. At the same time, they began to require students to spread some of their courses in such a way that they became acquainted with at least several of the basic fields of knowledge. The expression liberal education came to be associated especially with the attempt to give students breadth of understanding.

这一尝试促使20世纪30年代涵盖物理科学、生物科学、社会科学和人文科学等广泛知识领域的概论课程迅速普及。有时,所有学生在大一和大二时都被要求修读由几门此类概论课程组成的核心课程。二战后,此类课程继续传播;本书最初就是为这类社会科学概论课程或基础课程而编写的。

This attempt led to the rapid spread in the 1930s of survey courses covering broad fields of knowledge such as physical science, biological science, social science, and the humanities. Sometimes all students were required in their freshman and sophomore years to take a core curriculum consisting of several of these survey courses. After World War II, courses of this type continued to spread; this book originally was written for such a survey or basic course in the social sciences.

这一时期出现了诸如通识教育之类的术语,即旨在拓宽学生知识视野的大学课程。有时,该术语仅仅用来替代

To this period belong terms such as general education, college programs intended to broaden students’ intellectual horizons. Sometimes the term is used merely as a substitute for

更古老的术语“自由教育”。这两个表述都指一种旨在超越狭隘的实践或职业目标的培训。然而,尽管自由教育强调学习各种学科的必要性,但通识教育更强调不完全错过任何人类知识的主要领域。

the older term liberal education. Both expressions refer to a type of training designed to go beyond narrowly practical or vocational objectives. But although liberal education emphasizes the desirability of learning something about a variety of subjects, general education puts more stress on the importance of not missing completely any of the major fields of human knowledge.

追随潮流20 世纪 60 年代末至 70 年代,各大学院和大学纷纷调整课程设置,力求与时俱进。60 年代的学生关注当时的社会问题。而到了 70 年代,学生们对社会问题的兴趣逐渐减弱,转而关注金钱以及如何赚钱。因此,高等教育机构对商业以及法律、医学、工程和银行等专业相关课程的需求激增。自 1985 年以来,大多数大学生都主修商业或商业相关专业。

Following the Fads In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, colleges and universities restructured their curricula to be relevant. Students in the 1960s were interested in the social issues of their times. As the 1970s progressed, students became less interested in social issues and more interested in money and how to get it. As a result, institutions of higher learning experienced a demand for courses related to business and professions such as law, medicine, engineering, and banking. Since 1985, the majority of college students have been majoring in business or business-related subjects.

自20世纪50年代以来,大学入学人数增长了五倍,这促使入学标准放宽,课程要求降低,并开设了家庭食品管理和汽车所有权等课程。如今,大约有一半大学新生未能获得学位。

Since the 1950s, college enrollments have quintupled, which has contributed to the relaxing of standards, the dropping of course requirements, and the introduction of courses such as family food management and automobile ownership. Today, about half of the students who enter college as first-year students fail to get degrees.

几乎就在大学开始允许灵活的学习要求和课程设置,并根据潮流需求设立课程甚至整个院系的同时,它们就开始考虑让课程设置更加严谨。到了20世纪70年代末,一些学院和大学经历了类似于中小学教育中“回归基础”的运动。这种运动表现为取消肤浅的概论课程,恢复对希腊语和拉丁语的必修课,要求学生学习更多数学,并努力确保学生至少掌握一些被认为是广泛通识教育组成部分但许多学生除非被要求否则不会学习的领域的知识。

Almost as soon as colleges began to allow flexible requirements and courses of study, and instituted courses and even whole departments in response to trendy demands, they started thinking about making the curriculum more rigorous. By the late 1970s, some colleges and universities were experiencing the equivalent of the back-to-basics movement in elementary and secondary school practice. This took the form of eliminating superficial survey courses, returning to requirements of Greek and Latin, asking students to take more math, and trying to ensure that students had at least some knowledge of fields that are considered part of a broad liberal education but that many students would not study unless they were required to.

然而,早在1984年,美国国家人文基金会(NEH)就曾发布过一份题为《卓越 教育》的报告,指出大学未能兑现“提升学生文化和道德境界的承诺”,并且“大学一直在欺骗学生”。报告将此归咎于管理不善和课程设置不当,并指出,如果父母将大学教育的资金交给孩子去创办一家小企业,或许会更有用。尽管人们努力尝试改变现状,但许多观察人士认为,这种情况并未得到显著改善。

Nevertheless, back in 1984, a report entitled Excellence in Education by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) argued that colleges had not made good on “promises to make you better off culturally and morally,” and that “colleges have been ripping off students.” It attributed this to poor management and ill-conceived curricula, and suggested that the money invested in a college education would serve a more useful purpose if the parents would instead give that sum to a child to buy a small business. Despite attempts to change it, many observers believe that this situation has not significantly improved.

美国教育体系平等吗?

Is the US Educational System Equal?

尽管美国教育体系为大众提供了比任何其他国家都多的机会,但它仍然存在着难以解释的不平等现象。其中最显著的不平等现象体现在黑人与白人的处境对比中,正如我们在前几章中讨论过的。

Although the US educational system provides greater opportunities for the masses than any other country, it still perpetuates inequalities that are difficult to justify. The most striking of these is found in comparing the situation of blacks with whites, as we already discussed in earlier chapters.

图 11.21950 年至 2020 年完成四年或四年以上高中教育的成年人比例(来源:美国国家教育统计中心)

Figure 11.2Percentage of adults who have completed four years of high school or more, 1950 to 2020. (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)

图 11.2显示了完成四年高中教育的黑人成年人占总成年人口的比例。该图展示了我们自 1950 年以来取得的一些进步,同时也表明我们仍需取得进一步的进步。2020 年,黑人高中教育完成率为 88%,而白人高中教育完成率为 90%。

Figure 11.2, which shows the percentage of black adults compared to the total number of adults who have completed four years of high school, demonstrates some of the strides we have made since 1950, but also shows our need to make further gains. In 2020, 88 percent of blacks had completed high school compared to 90 percent of whites.

如上所述,教育的第二个不平等是基于财富和收入的。由于大多数地方通过房产税来资助教育,不同地区和地方应税财富的差异导致教育机会的巨大差异。在许多贫困地区,居民发现无法为子女提供足够的学校设施。20世纪70年代,最高法院的一项裁决裁定,使用地方房产税来支持教育加剧了不平等,并指示各州探索其他融资方式。因此,在过去几十年里,我们看到一些州从以地方房产税作为唯一的学校融资税,转变为全州范围内征收房产税。或州所得税或销售税作为学校的额外资金来源。我们可以期待未来会有进一步的变化。

As discussed, a second inequality in education is based on wealth and income. Because most localities finance their education with property taxes, variations of taxable wealth in different regions and localities cause significant variations in educational opportunities. In many poor areas, residents find it impossible to provide adequate school facilities for their children. In the 1970s, a Supreme Court case determined that the use of the local property tax, to support education perpetuated inequality, and states were directed to explore alternative financing methods. Thus, over the past decades, we have seen some states shift from local property taxation as their only school financing tax, to statewide property taxation or state income or sales taxes as additional sources of funding for schools. We can expect further change in the future.

即使所有地方都获得同等的教育支持,不平等现象仍然存在。儿童接受的教育程度与其家庭收入状况密切相关。家庭收入越高,孩子完成高中或上大学的可能性就越大。

Even if all localities received equal support for education, inequality would still exist. There is a close correlation between the amount of schooling received by children and the income status of their families. The higher the family income, the greater the likelihood that a child will finish high school or go to college.

普通公民应该接受多少教育?

How Much Education Should the Average Citizen Receive?

普通公民的正规教育应该进行到什么程度?小学?中学?还是专科?随着我们学校体系的变革和发展,这个基本问题必须得到解答,但答案却并非一成不变。每个人接受正规教育的时间肯定都是有限的。这个限度取决于个人的性格、能力、兴趣和目标;取决于个人所能获得的教育类型;也取决于学生、家长和社会必须承担的费用。

How far should the formal education of the average citizen be carried? Grade school? High school? Junior college? This basic question must be answered as our school system changes and develops, but there is no simple response. For every person, there is certainly a limit to the time that can be spent in acquiring a formal education. Where this limit is depends on the temperament, abilities, interests, and purposes of the individual; on the kinds of education available to the person; and on the costs that must be met by the student, the parents, and the community.

今天,很少有人会质疑小学教育对几乎所有人来说都是值得的。此外,在这个国家,人们普遍认为,对大多数年轻人来说,高中教育是可取的,值得花费,尽管我们可能没有为他们中的许多人提供最有帮助的课程。高等教育的情况略有不同,我们很可能会质疑绝大多数年轻人是否应该完成四年制大学教育。许多人认为我们应该制定限制四年制学院和大学的入学人数的录取标准。但似乎有越来越多的人支持这样的观点,即大多数年轻人最终应该至少拥有相当于两年制社区大学的学位。如图 11.3所示,自 1960 年以来,接受高中和大学教育的人口比例大幅增加。

Today, few people would question that a grade school education is worth the cost for almost everyone. Also, there is general agreement in this country that a high school education is desirable and worth the cost for the majority of young people, though perhaps for many of them we are not providing the most helpful kind of curriculum. The situation with respect to higher education is somewhat different, and we may well question whether it is desirable for the great majority of young people to complete four years of college. Many people believe we should set admission standards that would limit enrollments in four-year colleges and universities. But there seems to be increasing support for the point of view that eventually most young people should have at least the equivalent of a two-year community college degree. As you can see in Figure 11.3, the percentage of our population receiving a high school and college education has increased substantially since 1960.

随着社区学院越来越贴合社会当前的教育需求,如今的高中毕业生更容易找到适合自己能力和需求的继续教育。对于那些不喜欢继续教育的人来说,无限期延长正规学术教育并没有什么魔力。但对于没有接受过培训的青少年来说,就业越来越困难。这在很大程度上解释了为什么社区学院越来越重视提供更多的职业学校和职业课程。然而,这或许也反映了近期席卷美国的保守主义趋势,以及人们重新关注培养能够提升美国在世界经济中竞争力的技能。

With community colleges becoming more responsive to current educational needs of our society, high school graduates today can more easily find the kind of further education that suits their abilities and needs. For those who have no liking for it, the indefinite extension of formal academic education holds no magic. But it is increasingly difficult for adolescents without training to find jobs. This largely explains the increasing emphasis on providing more vocational schools and more vocational courses in community colleges. However, this may also reflect both the recent conservative trend that has swept the country and a return to concern with developing skills that make the United States competitive in the world economy.

图 11.3教育程度(25岁及以上人群)。(来源:美国国家教育统计中心)

Figure 11.3Educational attainment (persons age twenty-five years and over). (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)

但是,对于那些对继续深造不感兴趣,或者在某些情况下几乎无法从高水平职业培训中获益的人来说,该怎么办呢?仍然有大量相对不需要技能的工作需要做,如果……愿意工作的人总能找到,工资也合理。一个难题是,我们一直在贬低普通工作的尊严,那些极其有用且必要,但薪水却不高,前景却黯淡的工作。如此一来,我们剥夺了许多能力有限的年轻人学习如何工作的机会,也剥夺了他们通过积累自信和经验,在生活中找到有用且独立的位置的机会。

But what of individuals who are not interested in further schooling and who in some cases may have little ability to benefit from a high level of vocational training? There is still a great deal of relatively unskilled work that needs to be done and for which people would pay if willing workers could be found at reasonable wages. One difficulty is that we have been downgrading the dignity of commonplace work, of jobs that are extremely useful and necessary, but only provide moderate pay and offer no glamorous future. In doing this, we have robbed many young people with limited ability of the chance to learn how to work and, by gaining confidence and experience, to find a useful and independent place in life.

经济、政治和社会制度的相互作用

Interaction of Economics, Politics, and Social Institutions

社会科学中的大多数学科在研究时必须被孤立出来,但实际上它们并非孤立存在的。教育体系也是如此。我们的教育体系包含文化价值观,因此在塑造其他社会、经济和政治制度方面发挥着重要作用,但同时,它也受这些制度的影响。当前的教育状况就是一个很好的例子。所有人都同意,学校系统可以而且应该做得更好。问题是:如何做得更好?一些人认为答案是增加投入——例如,提高教师工资并为学校提供最新的技术设备。另一些人则认为,理想的答案是提高学校的效率——让教师更加努力地工作,让学生更加努力地学习,让管理人员认为学校不需要那么多行政管理,从而裁减他们的工作。但不要翘首以盼。教育机构中的个人很可能会选择容易的道路。除非提供激励措施,否则学生不会有动力更加努力地学习。教师也是如此。而且,管理人员几乎不可能裁减他们的工作。

Most subjects in social science must be isolated for purposes of study, but in reality they are not isolated. So it is with the educational system. Our educational system includes cultural values and thereby plays an important role in shaping other social, economic, and political institutions, but simultaneously it is shaped by them. The current state of education is a case in point. All agree that school systems could and should do a better job. The question is: how? Some argue that the answer is to spend more—for instance, to improve teachers’ pay and to provide schools with the latest technological equipment. Others argue that the ideal answer is for schools to become more efficient—for teachers to work harder, for students to study harder, and for administrators to decide that schools do not need so much administration and to eliminate their own jobs. But don’t hold your breath waiting. Individuals in educational institutions are likely to opt for the easy path. Students aren’t going to be motivated to study harder unless provided with incentives to do so. It’s the same with teachers. And there is almost no way administrators are going to eliminate their own jobs.

经济、政治和社会制度的相互作用可以在教师标准的制定中得到体现。制定标准、认证能力和强制教授某些基础科目的理念值得称赞,但所有这些都容易被滥用。教师们对认证的看法存在分歧。教龄多年的教师认为,他们的能力突然受到质疑和测试是不公平的。新教师认为,他们近期所受的教育使他们能够掌握最新的教学方法,并认为如果老教师无所畏惧,他们就不会抗议能力测试。当机构工作人员没有接受过专业教育培训时,这两类人都可以一致蔑视那些制定教育标准的机构。然而,纳税人不想把认证交到那些即将获得认证的人手中。

The interaction of economics, politics, and social institutions can be illustrated in the setting of teacher standards. The concepts of setting standards, certifying competence, and mandating the teaching of certain basic subjects are admirable, but all are liable to abuse. Teachers are divided in their view on certification. Teachers who have been teaching for years feel it is unfair for their competency suddenly to be questioned and tested. New teachers feel that their own recent education qualifies them in the latest methods and believe that if the older teachers had nothing to fear, they would not protest competency tests. Both groups can unite in their scorn of agencies that set educational standards when the staffs of the agencies have no professional educational training. Yet taxpayers do not want to leave certification in the hands of the very people who are to be certified.

这个例子有双重含义:首先,难题没有简单的答案;其次,我们在社会某个领域所做的事很可能对其他领域产生重大影响。只有考量所有这些影响,并认识到实施简单解决方案的陷阱,我们才能制定明智的社会政策。

The point of this example is twofold: First, there are no easy answers to difficult questions, and second, what we do in one area of society is likely to have significant effects in other areas. Only by considering all those effects and recognizing the pitfalls in implementing the easy solutions can we hope to develop wise social policy.

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 美国教育体系具有双重目的:既要发展学生的个性,又要使学生社会化。
  • The US educational system has a dual thrust: It attempts to develop students’ individuality and to socialize students.
  • 美国的教育机构是其历史的产物。
  • Educational institutions in the United States are a product of their history.
  • 我们的教育系统面临的主要问题是如何高效、廉价地提供优质、平等的教育,并以一种适合学生社会化的方式。
  • The main problem facing our educational system is how to provide excellent, equal education efficiently, inexpensively, and in a manner that appropriately socializes the students.
  • 大学课程已从教授特定科目的僵化体系演变为具有很大自由度和课程多样化的选修体系。
  • The college curriculum has evolved from a rigid system that taught specific subjects to an elective system with significant freedom and varied courses.
  • 我们的教育体系不平等的一个重要原因是其资助方式。
  • An important reason why our educational system is not equal is the methods used to fund it.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 学术自由(189)
  • academic freedom (189)
  • 特许学校 (197)
  • charter school (197)
  • 协作学习环境(198)
  • collaborative learning environment (198)
  • 社区学院 (194)
  • community college (194)
  • 认证 (188)
  • credentializing (188)
  • 双元制学校(192)
  • dual school system (192)
  • 美国教育的双重推力(189)
  • dual thrust of US education (189)
  • 教育(188)
  • education (188)
  • 通识教育(201)
  • general education (201)
  • 领先一步 (193)
  • Head Start (193)
  • 多元文化主义运动 (198)
  • multiculturalism movement (198)
  • 单一学校系统 (192)
  • unitary school system (192)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 解释教育和社会化之间的区别。
  2. Explain the difference between education and socialization.
  3. 免费公共教育如何促进美国民主的发展?
  4. How does free public education contribute to the development of US democracy?
  5. 讨论自殖民时代以来美国教育的发展。
  6. Discuss the development of US education since colonial times.
  7. 哪些因素促进了中小学入学人数的增加?
  8. What factors have contributed to increasing enrollments at the primary and secondary levels?
  9. 美国的教育体系结构与欧洲有何不同?
  10. How does the structure of the educational system in the United States differ from that of Europe?
  11. 讨论社区大学的历史。
  12. Discuss the history of community colleges.
  13. 讨论过去一百年来学校课程发生的变化。
  14. Discuss the changes that have taken place in school curricula over the past hundred years.
  15. 教育机会存在哪些差异?
  16. What differences in educational opportunities exist?
  17. 多元文化和协作学习如何提高学校的效率?
  18. How can multiculturalism and collaborative learning improve the effectiveness of schools?
  19. 讨论一些可以替代公立学校的学校类型。
  20. Discuss some types of schools that are alternatives to public schools.
  21. 关于美国教育在过去一百年取得的进步,我们可以得出哪些结论?还有哪些工作要做?
  22. What conclusions can be drawn concerning the progress made in US education over the past hundred years? What still remains to be done?
  23. 举一个政治问题影响教育问题的例子。
  24. Give an example of a political issue influencing an educational issue.

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 根据www.ericdigests.org/1995-l/multicultural.htm,多元文化教育计划有哪三种基本类型?每种计划的重点是什么?
  2. According to www.ericdigests.org/1995-l/multicultural.htm, what are the three basic types of multicultural education programs and what is the focus of each?
  3. 请访问www.amshq.org/。蒙特梭利教育方法是什么?
  4. Go to www.amshq.org/. What is the Montessori approach to education?
  5. 请访问www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/28/5-facts-about-latinos-and-education/。近年来,西班牙裔和黑人的辍学率有何变化?(仅供参考:答:有所下降。)
  6. Go to www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/28/5-facts-about-latinos-and-education/. What has happened to Hispanic and black dropout rates in recent years? (for reference only: ans: They have fallen.)
  7. 请访问www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dAujuqCo7s观看视频或直接听歌曲。当前哪项教育政策受到了批评?请列举三项针对该政策的批评。
  8. Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dAujuqCo7s and watch the video or just listen to the song. What current education policy is being criticized? Name three criticisms of this policy.
  9. 请访问www.edreform.com/2012/03/15/just-thefaqs-charter-schools。根据教育改革中心的说法,特许学校是什么?
  10. Go to www.edreform.com/2012/03/15/just-thefaqs-charter-schools. According to the Center for Educational Reform, what are charter schools?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 布鲁姆,艾伦·D.,《美国精神的封闭:高等教育如何辜负了民主以及当今学生的贫困灵魂》,纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,1987 年。
  • Bloom, Allan D., The Closing of the American Mind: How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and the Impoverished Souls of Today’s Students, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.
  • 布莱恩·卡普兰,《反对教育的案例:为什么教育系统浪费时间和金钱》,新泽西州普林斯顿:普林斯顿大学出版社,2018 年。
  • Caplan, Bryan, The Case Against Education: Why the Educational System Is a Waste of Time and Money, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.
  • Carr, Sam,《动机、教育政策和成就:批判性视角》,阿宾登:劳特利奇,2015 年。
  • Carr, Sam, Motivation, Educational Policy and Achievement: A Critical Perspective, Abingdon: Routledge, 2015.
  • 教育研究与创新中心,《面向未来的学校教育:思考情景,重新思考教育》,巴黎:经济合作与发展组织,2006 年。
  • Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, Schooling for Tomorrow: Think Scenarios, Rethink Education, Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006.
  • 道格拉斯·唐尼,《学校究竟有多重要:为什么我们 关于学校和不平等的假设大多是错误的》,伊利诺伊州芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社,2020 年
  • Downey, Douglas, How Schools Really Matter: Why Our Assumption about Schools and Inequality Is Mostly Wrong, Chicago, IL: U. of Chicago Press, 2020
  • Dwyer, James G.,《合理范围内的代金券:以儿童为中心的教育改革方法》纽约州伊萨卡:康奈尔大学出版社,2002 年。
  • Dwyer, James G., Vouchers within Reason: A Child-Centered Approach to Education Reform, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002.
  • Labaree, David F.,《完美混乱:美国高等教育不太可能崛起》,伊利诺伊州芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社,2017 年。
  • Labaree, David F., A Perfect Mess: The Unlikely Ascendancy of American Higher Education, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
  • 拉维奇,黛安,《伟大的美国学校系统的生与死:考试和选择如何破坏教育》,纽约:基础图书公司,2011 年。
  • Ravitch, Diane, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Underm ining Education, New York: Basic Books, 2011.
  • 桑德斯 (Sander)、理查德 (Richard) 和小泰勒·斯图尔特 (Taylor Stuart Jr.),《不匹配:平权行动如何伤害了它本应帮助的学生,以及为什么大学不愿承认》,纽约:基础图书出版社,2012 年。
  • Sander, Richard, and Taylor Stuart Jr, Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It, New York: Basic Books, 2012.
  • Selingo,Jeffrey,《谁能进入以及为什么?:大学招生内幕一年》,纽约:斯克里布纳出版社,2020 年。
  • Selingo, Jeffrey, Who Gets In and Why?: A Year Inside College Admissions, New York: Scribner, 2020.
  • 斯特恩,索尔,《挣脱束缚:公立学校的教训和学校选择的必要性》纽约:Encounter Books,2004 年。
  • Stern, Sol, Breaking Free: Public School Lessons and the Imperative of School Choice, New York: Encounter Books, 2004.
  • 韦斯托弗,塔拉,《Educated》,纽约:兰登书屋,2018 年。
  • Westover, Tara, Educated, New York: Random House, 2018.
  • Wolff, Edward N.,《教育真的有帮助吗?技能、工作与不平等》,纽约:牛津大学出版社,2006年。
  • Wolff, Edward N., Does Education Really Help? Skill, Work, and Inequality, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第十二社会和经济分层

chapter 12Social and Economic Stratification

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-12

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-12

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 列出三种社会分层类型
  • List three types of social stratification
  • 讨论社会流动性在使某些社会分层为社会所接受方面的作用
  • Discuss the role of social mobility in making some social stratification acceptable to society
  • 列出收入不平等的三个来源
  • List three sources of income inequality
  • 说明美国的贫困线是多少
  • State what the poverty threshold is in the United States
  • 讨论解决经济不平等问题的任何实际方案都必须考虑的六个问题
  • Discuss six issues that any practical program for meeting the problems of economic inequality must take into account
  • 解释美国阶级制度的含义以及它与阶级意识的关系
  • Explain what is meant by the US class system and how it relates to class consciousness

每个社会中的人们都可以被划分成不同的群体——有时界限分明,有时则较为粗略。阶层化是指根据收入、职业、权力、特权、生活方式、居住地、年龄、性别或种族的差异对人们进行分组;你或许还能想到其他类别。从分化的角度来看,阶层化并不一定是坏事。人们之间存在差异,这种差异为生活增添了多样性。但是,当存在等级制度时——当一个群体认为自己更优越,或拥有获取社会资源的特权时——社会公平问题就会出现。许多社会和经济阶层化体系确实会形成上级、中级和下级群体的等级制度;这种阶层化正是我们本章关注的重点。

The people of every society can be divided into groups—sometimes along clear-cut lines, sometimes only roughly. Stratification is the grouping of people according to differences in income, occupation, power, privilege, manner of living, region where they live, age, gender, or race; you can probably think of other categories. Stratification, in the sense of differentiation, is not necessarily bad. People differ and that difference adds diversity to life. But when there is a hierarchy—when one group considers itself better, or maintains privileged access to society’s resources—questions of social equity are raised. Many systems of social and economic stratification do create a hierarchy of superior, intermediate, and inferior groups; that hierarchical stratification is our primary concern in this chapter.

社会分层似乎是不可避免的。某些活动和某些工作对社会比其他活动和工作更为重要。有些活动和工作只有能力出众、受过特殊训练或经验丰富的人才能够胜任。政治职位必须有人填补,经济活动必须组织,医疗服务必须提供,军队必须统帅。在这些活动中扮演重要角色的人获得了权力和威望。通常,他们还能获得高于平均水平的收入和各种特殊特权。此外,由于这些人往往彼此密切联系,他们形成了共同的态度和生活方式。有时,他们会通过法律和宗教制裁来巩固自己的地位,但即使没有这些保障,他们也常常能够将自己的优越地位传给子女。

Social stratification appears to be unavoidable. Some activities and some kinds of work are more important to a society than others. Some can be carried on only by people of out-standing ability with special training or experience. Political offices must be filled, economic activities must be organized, medical services must be provided, and military forces must be commanded. Those who play important roles in such activities acquire power and prestige. Usually they also acquire larger than average incomes and various special privileges. In addition, because these individuals tend to associate principally with one another, they develop common attitudes and modes of living. Sometimes they entrench themselves in their positions by means of legal and religious sanctions, but even without these safeguards, they can often pass their superior status along to their children.

社会分层一旦牢固确立,便有助于社会稳定。它意味着人们普遍接受某些群体及其后代承担着某些特定职能的事实。由于人们了解了自身在社会中的地位以及未来应走的道路,竞争力会降低。当社会分层不那么僵化,个人拥有更多改变地位的机会时,即使客观上社会流动性增强,情况更加公平,不满和冲突也可能更加明显。因此,分层的减弱往往伴随着社会动荡,因为这种减弱会将注意力集中在制度的不公平性上。

When firmly established, social stratification contributes to social stability. It means general acceptance of the fact that certain groups perform certain functions, as do their children after them. Competitiveness is reduced because people know their place in society and the paths they are expected to follow. When social stratification is less rigid and there are more opportunities for an individual to change status, dissatisfaction and conflict may be more evident, even though the situation is objectively fairer in the sense that there is more social mobility. Thus, a lessening of stratification often is accompanied by social unrest because that reduction focuses attention on the unfairness of the system.

社会分层类型

Types of Social Stratification

社会分层主要有三种类型:等级、种姓和社会阶级。我们主要关注最后一种类型,因为社会阶级是现代工业社会中主要的分层形式。然而,了解一些等级和种姓制度的知识将有助于我们理解社会阶级的本质。

There are three principal types of social stratification: estates, castes, and social classes. We are chiefly interested in the last type because social classes represent the major form of stratification found in modern industrial societies. However, some knowledge of estate and caste systems will contribute to our understanding of the nature of social classes.

庄园

Estates

在讨论阶层划分时,“等级”一词并非指土地,而是指贵族、神职人员、商人、工匠和农民等群体。等级划分体系起源于欧洲封建社会。一个人所属的等级及其在社会等级中的地位主要取决于习俗、职业、与土地相关的权利和义务以及其他法律约束。

When used in a discussion of stratification, the term estate refers not to land but to groups such as the nobility, the clergy, merchants, artisans, and peasants. The estate stratification system developed in Europe under feudalism. The estate to which a person belonged and its place in the social hierarchy were determined chiefly by custom, occupation, rights and obligations with respect to land, and other legal sanctions.

在等级制度下,个人的社会地位几乎总是由父母继承;群体之间的界限清晰,几乎每个人都知道自己的归属。他们甚至可能被要求以特定的着装来表明自己与他人的关系。社会流动的机会很少,但在法律和习俗的框架内完全有可能。在封建时代,贵族可以通过提供特殊服务来解放农奴,或者国王可以授予其贵族头衔(英国女王至今仍保留着授予贵族头衔的权力)。在等级制度下,服兵役和担任神职人员也是向上流动的可能途径。

In an estate system, the position of an individual in society is nearly always inherited from parents; the lines between groups are clearly drawn, and almost everyone knows just where he or she belongs. They may even be required to dress in a particular way to indicate their station in relation to others. The opportunity for mobility is small, but it is entirely possible within the framework of law and custom. In feudal times, a noble could free a serf from bondage to the land in return for a special service, or a king could bestow a title of nobility (the Queen of the United Kingdom still bestows titles today). Military service and the priesthood are also possible avenues of upward mobility in an estate system.

中世纪等级制度相对僵化,更适合于静态社会而非动态社会,在封建制度衰落、工业革命以及强调自由平等的民主思想兴起等变革的冲击下逐渐瓦解。

The medieval estate system, with its relatively rigid social categories, was better suited to a static than to a dynamic society. It gradually disintegrated under the impact of changes such as the decline of feudalism, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of democratic ideology, with its strong emphasis on freedom and equality.

种姓

Castes

种姓是一种基于出身、财富或其他显著特征的严格阶级划分。在讨论阶层分化时,种姓制度通常与印度联系在一起,这种制度在印度一直盛行了约3000年。自20世纪50年代禁止基于种姓的歧视,并在20世纪70年代和80年代通过了更多反对歧视的法律以来,种姓制度的法律基础在印度已被消除,但其文化遗产依然存在,种姓仍然在印度人的生活中扮演着重要的角色。

Caste is a rigid class distinction based on birth, wealth, or some other distinguishing characteristic. Within a discussion of stratification, the caste system is usually associated with India, where until recently it had prevailed for about 3,000 years. Since caste-based discrimination was banned in the 1950s and additional laws were passed against it in the 1970s and 1980s, the legal underpinnings of the caste system have been removed in India, but the cultural legacy remains and caste still plays an important role in Indian life.

贫穷的低种姓印度农民。

Poor, low-caste Indian farmers.

在种姓制度下,个人一出生便获得相应的社会地位。种姓制度之所以如此强大,似乎源于这样一个事实:它不仅根植于习俗,更是印度教不可分割的一部分。它基于“法”(dharma)、“因果报应”(karma)和“轮回”的理念。“法”是维系这一制度的法则。“因果报应”则指个人为履行与种姓成员身份相关的义务而采取的行动。“轮回”的教义认为,如果一个人今生充分履行义务,那么来世便会转世投胎到更高的种姓。

Under the caste system, an individual acquires a social position at birth. The great vitality of the caste system seems to arise from the fact that, besides being firmly established by custom, it is an integral part of the Hindu religion. It is based on the ideas of dharma, karma, and transmigration. Dharma is the law that sustains the system. Karma refers to the actions a person takes in fulfilling the duties associated with membership in a caste. Tire doctrine of transmigration holds that if a person fulfills duties sufficiently well in this life, that person will in a future life be reincarnated into a higher caste.

种姓制度比等级制度更为僵化,因为理论上,除了死亡和轮回,没有其他途径可以提升地位。实际上,种姓向上流动的现象非常有限。最近,印度政府试图通过建立配额制度来增加向上流动的现象,该制度为低种姓成员保留大学入学名额。此举引发了争议,因为高种姓认为这种配额制度对他们不公平。

A caste system is even more rigid than an estate system because in theory there is no way of moving to a higher status except through death and reincarnation. In practice, a very limited amount of upward shifting occurs. Recently, the Indian government attempted to increase the upward shifting by creating a quota system, which holds places open in universities for members of the lower castes. This move has been controversial as the higher-level castes argue that such a quota system is unfair to them.

其他社会也存在一些与印度社会类似的社会分层制度。在美国,一些作家将黑人,尤其是南方的黑人称为“种姓”。为了支持这一说法,他们指出,黑人出生在社会弱势群体的人,至少在过去,他们很难进入以白人为主的群体。例如,直到2000年,在某些州,黑人和白人通婚在技术上都是非法的。阿拉巴马州在2000年成为最后一个废除该法律的州。(该法律自20世纪60年代以来就没有执行过。)

Social stratification systems having some of the characteristics of the one in India have been found in other societies. In the United States, blacks, especially in the South, have been called a caste by some writers. To support this designation, they point out that blacks belong by birth to a socially underprivileged group and that, at least in the past, it was very difficult for them to enter groups predominantly occupied by whites. For example, until 2000, it was technically illegal in some states for blacks and whites to intermarry. Alabama, in 2000, was the last state to repeal its law. (The law had not been enforced since the 1960s.)

南非种族隔离的象征。 © Keystone/Getty Images

A symbol of apartheid in South Africa. © Keystone/Getty Images

尽管存在这些相似之处,但大多数观察家认为,美国黑人的地位与印度教低种姓成员的地位截然不同。首先,即使在最近的改革之前,黑人也不受任何严格的职业限制,有些人甚至在政府、商界和各行各业中取得了高位。更重要的是,他们低下的社会地位并非基于宗教制裁;相反,它过去和现在都与大多数美国人的宗教教义以及人人享有自由和平等机会的民主理想相悖。

Despite these similarities, most observers believe the position of US blacks differed considerably from that of the members of a low Hindu caste. In the first place, even before recent reforms, blacks were subject to no rigid occupational limitations, and some achieved high positions in government, business, and the professions. Even more important, their inferior social position was not based on religious sanctions; rather, it was and is contrary to most Americans’ religious teachings and democratic ideals of freedom and equal opportunity for all human beings.

与美国情况相比,与种姓制度更相似的是一些非洲国家存在的种族隔离制度——种族隔离。在种族隔离制度下,黑人无法与白人从事相同的工作或居住在相同的地方,他们与白人的相互关系也受到严重限制。种族隔离制度受到大多数其他国家的谴责;20世纪60年代初,南部非洲国家津巴布韦彻底推翻了种族隔离制度。20世纪90年代,南非废除了种族隔离制度。

A closer analogy to the caste system than the US situation is the apartheid system—a separation of the races—that existed in some African countries. In an apartheid system blacks could not hold the same jobs or live in the same places as whites, and their interrelations with whites were severely limited. Apartheid was condemned by most other countries; in the early 1960s, it was overthrown altogether in the southern African country of Zimbabwe. In the 1990s it was abolished in South Africa.

社会阶层

Social Classes

虽然大多数现代工业社会没有正式的分层体系,但它们确实存在一种社会分层,称为社会阶级体系。与等级和种姓不同,这些社会阶级不受任何法律或宗教制裁的支持。它们不是界限分明、能够将社会中的每个人都归入的群体。社会科学家无法就应该承认有多少个社会阶级存在达成任何普遍共识,这一事实证明了社会阶级并不是完全明确的实体。在民主的工业社会中,社会地位是一个连续体,个人和家庭沿着它从上到下分布。如果我们将这个社会等级上的人划分为两个、三个或更多的社会阶级,我们就必然是武断地这样做。

Although most modern industrial societies do not have formal stratification systems, they do have a type of social stratification called a social class system. Unlike estates and castes, these social classes are not supported by any legal or religious sanctions. They are not clear-cut, definitely delimited groups into which every person in the community can be placed. The fact that social classes are not perfectly clear-cut entities is proven by the inability of social scientists to come to any general agreement on just how many of them should be recognized as existing. In a democratic industrial society, social status is a continuum, with individuals and families scattered along it from top to bottom. If we divide people on this social scale into two, three, or more social classes, we must do so arbitrarily.

社会科学家也难以确定究竟应使用哪些标准来确定社会地位。有些人会完全根据经济因素将个人(或家庭)置于特定阶层。持这种观点的人通常主要强调收入。其他人(可能是大多数)会根据一般社会地位来确定个人的地位,即根据社区基于各种标准将个人置于社会等​​级的高低。收入只是其中一个因素。图 12.1显示了一些常见的分层等级。教育、职业和收入等等级的组合构成了个人的社会经济地位。1

Social scientists also have difficulty deciding just what criteria should be used in determining social status. Some would place an individual (or family) in a given class entirely on the basis of economic considerations. Those who take this point of view usually put their chief emphasis on income. Others, probably the majority, would determine the status of an individual by general social standing—that is, by whether the community, on the basis of various criteria, places the individual high or low on the social scale. Income would be only one factor. Some of the common stratification hierarchies are shown in Figure 12.1. The combination of hierarchies—education, occupation, and income—forms an individual’s socioeconomic status.1

请注意,图 12.1 中所示的层级结构被绘制成五边形,顶部尖锐,底部略宽。这种形状与本书早期版本呈现这些内容的方式有所不同。早在 20 世纪 30 年代本书首次出版时,其形状是一座金字塔——顶部狭窄,底部宽阔。这反映了社会科学家数百年来讨论收入不平等的方式,因为 17 和 18 世纪欧洲社会的分层,即大多数人处于底层,极少数人处于顶层,可以用一个金字塔。在20世纪50年代和60年代,这种情况开始发生变化;随着越来越多的人进入中产阶级,下层阶级的相对规模缩小。金字塔不再适合代表当时的情况。为了捕捉这种变化,我们将其改为菱形,表明大多数人属于中产阶级,上层阶级和下层阶级的规模较小。我们之所以改为菱形,是因为我们预期随着成员在社会阶梯上向上流动,下层阶级的规模会继续缩小。但这些预期是错误的;随着美国社会向上流动性的放缓和移民的增加,下层阶级已经停止缩小。因此,扩大等级制度底层的需求导致了五边形的出现。

Notice that the hierarchies shown in Figure 12.1 are drawn as pentagons with a sharp point at the top and a somewhat wider base. This shape represents a change from the way earlier editions of the book presented this material. Back in the 1930s when this book was first published, the shape was a pyramid—narrow at the top and wide at the bottom. This reflected the way social scientists had talked about income inequality for hundreds of years because the social stratification of European societies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with most people at the bottom and very few at the top, could be reasonably well represented by a pyramid. In the 1950s and 1960s, that began to change; the lower classes decreased in relative size as more people moved into the middle class. The pyramid no longer was appropriate to represent the situation. To capture that change, we shifted to a diamond shape, suggesting that the majority of people fell in the middle class, with smaller upper and lower classes. We made the change to the diamond shape in the expectation that the lower class would continue to shrink as the members moved up the social ladder. Those expectations were wrong; the lower classes have stopped shrinking as upward social mobility has slowed and as immigration has increased in the United States. Hence, the need to expand the bottom of the hierarchies led to the pentagon shape.

图 12.1社会经济等级。

Figure 12.1Socioeconomic hierarchies.

社会阶层的定义:社会阶层是指一个社区中在经济地位、态度和信仰、教育程度、生活方式、他人对他们的尊重以及他们对社区事务的影响力(或无影响力)方面较为相似的人群。根据这个定义,社会阶层在某种程度上是一种亚文化。社会地位相近的人群不仅可能居住在同一个社区,彼此之间交往频繁,彼此通婚,而且与社会地位较高或较低的人群相比,他们在言语、举止和道德标准方面也可能表现出相似之处。

Social Class Defined A social class consists of those people in a community who are somewhat similar in their economic status, their attitudes and beliefs, their educational attainments, their ways of living, the regard in which others hold them, and their power or lack of power to influence community affairs. According to this definition, social class is, to some degree, a subculture. People whose social statuses are similar are not only likely to live in the same neighborhoods, associate largely with one another, and marry one another, but they are also likely to show similarities of speech, manners, and moral standards as compared with people who are higher or lower on the social scale.

由于社会阶级与其他类型的阶层结构一样,代表着优劣关系,一些作者将社会阶级结构比作一块千层蛋糕。蛋糕顶层是薄薄的一层,由一小部分拥有最高经济和社会地位的人组成。蛋糕底层是另一薄层,代表着那些经济和社会地位非常低下、不受社会重视的人。在这两个极端之间,在不同层面上,还有更厚的层,代表着绝大多数人口。对这种类比的主要反对意见是,社会阶级之间的划分并不像蛋糕层之间的划分那样明确。

Because social classes, like other types of stratification, represent superiority/inferiority relationships, some writers have compared the class structure of society to a layer cake. At the top of the cake is a thin layer consisting of a small group of people who have the highest economic and social status. At the bottom of the cake is another thin layer representing those whose economic and social status is very low and whom the community regards as of little account. Between these two extremes, at various levels, lie thicker layers, which represent the great majority of the population. The chief objection to this analogy is that the divisions between social classes are not as definite as those between the layers of a cake.

社会阶层并非像家庭或社区那样有组织的群体。相反,它们是一些实用的概念。它们也是社会现实,但仅限于某种意义上,即任何复杂社会中的人们都可以粗略地划分为几个大群体,每个群体中的人们都拥有大致相同的社会地位和其他相似之处。由于阶级之间的界限既模糊又随意,许多人难以定位。阶级层次越多,区分阶级并确定个人的归属就越困难。

Social classes are not organized groups like families or communities. Rather, they are useful concepts. They are also social realities, but only in the sense that the people of any complex society can be divided roughly into a few large groups in such a way that those in each group have about the same general social standing and other similarities. Because the lines of division among classes are both vague and arbitrary, many individuals are difficult to place. The more class layers, the greater the difficulty of distinguishing between them and determining just where individuals fit.

为了将个体划分为不同的社会经济阶层,通常需要对各种特征进行平均。这通常通过加权系统来实现;分数是根据各种特征分配的分数,这些分数被加起来,并将分数在一定范围内的个人分配到特定的类别。例如,受过高等教育的人可能得分较高,但高收入的人得分也较高,因此,经过加权处理后,高收入低教育程度的人和低收入高教育程度的人可能被归入同一社会经济群体。使用加权系统,我们可以将人们划分为上层阶级、中上阶层、中产阶级、中下阶层和下层阶级。所考察的特征包括职业、收入来源、住房类型以及研究对象的居住区域。图 12.2显示了典型的阶级划分和特征。

In order to classify individuals into socioeconomic classes, it is generally necessary to average a variety of characteristics. This is normally done by a weighting system; points are allocated for various characteristics, these points are added up, and individuals within certain ranges of points are assigned to certain categories. For example, people with advanced education may get many points, but high income also confers many points, so somebody with high income and low education and somebody with low income and advanced education may fall into the same socioeconomic group after the weighting process. Using the weighting system allows us to organize people into upper class, upper-middle class, middle class, lower-middle class, and lower class. Some of the characteristics looked at are occupation, sources of income, type of housing, and the area within which the subject lives. Figure 12.2 presents typical class divisions and characteristics.

美国的阶级结构。擦鞋服务几乎总是由少数族裔提供。有人认为,这是因为社会未能提供更好的机会。

Class structure in the United States. Shoe shines are almost invariably given by minorities. Some argue that this is because society fails to offer better opportunities.

大多数人确实对自己所属的社会阶层有所了解,尽管他们可能不会像社会学家那样给出相同的名称。例如,一个家庭可能认为自己是普通人;社会学家可能会将他们归类为中下阶层。某个社会阶层的成员认识到,他们与社会阶层相近的人之间的共同点,要多于与高于或低于他们的人之间的共同点。此外,正如我们所指出的,他们很可能生活在这些地区,从事着那些使他们与同类人建立特别密切联系的工作。

Most people do have some idea of the social class to which they belong, though they may not give it the same name that a sociologist would. For example, a family may think of themselves as ordinary people; a sociologist might classify them as belonging to the lower-middle class. Members of a social class recognize that they have more in common with others at a similar social level than they do with those above or below them. Also, as we have noted, they are likely to live in those areas and do those kinds of work that bring them into especially close association with people like themselves.

社会阶层的家庭基础 阶层划分的基本单位是家庭,因为除极少数情况外,一个家庭的所有成员都被视为属于同一阶层或层级。直系亲属群体的所有成员都享有相同的社会地位。通常,决定社会阶层的最重要因素是家庭中养家糊口者的职业、财富和收入。

The Family Basis of Social Class The primary unit of stratification is the family, for except in rare cases all members of a family are regarded as belonging to the same stratum, or layer. The same social status is shared by all members of the immediate family group. As a rule, the most important factors in determining social class are the occupation, wealth, and income of the breadwinners in the family.

法律、医学、政府高级职位以及大型企业管理等职业往往享有相当高的声望,因为它们需要超乎寻常的能力和培训;而其他职业,例如经营小店或从事技术性行业,则被认为受人尊敬;但有些职业,尤其是那些需要非技术性体力劳动的职业,却被许多社会成员看不起。一般来说,一种职业的受人尊敬程度与其收入密切相关,尽管也有例外。例如,一位联邦法官可能比餐饮服务商老板享有更高的声望,但收入却更低。

Occupations such as law and medicine, high government positions, and the management of large business enterprises yield considerable prestige because they require more than average ability and training; other occupations, such as keeping small stores or working at skilled trades, are regarded as respectable; but some occupations, especially those that require unskilled manual labor, are looked down on by many members of the community. In general, the regard in which an occupation is held is closely correlated with the income it yields, although there are exceptions to this rule. A federal judge, for example, may have more prestige but less income than the owner of a catering service.

社会阶层的成员身份往往会在同一个家族中代代相传,因为孩子可能会获得与父母相同的态度和生活方式,获得类似的教育优势,从事类似的职业,并继承父母可能拥有的任何财富。

Membership in social classes tends to be transmitted in the same family line from generation to generation because children are likely to acquire much the same attitudes and modes of living as their parents, to receive similar educational advantages, to enter similar occupations, and to inherit whatever wealth their parents may possess.

2012年,查尔斯·默里(Charles Murray)写了一本颇具争议的著作《分崩离析:1960-2010年美国白人的现状》(Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010)。他在书中指出,上层阶级已经与白人社会的其他部分隔绝开来。他们就读于精英大学,通婚,居住在被他称为“超级街区”(Super Zips)的独立社区,这些社区的白人和亚裔人口比其他社区更多。因此,不仅存在基于种族的文化隔离,还存在基于习惯和收入的文化隔离。默里认为,精英阶层已经与美国社会的其他部分脱节。例如,他们不看奥普拉或朱迪法官的节目;他们适量饮用葡萄酒和精酿啤酒;他们不吸烟。他们经常外出就餐,不是去丹尼斯餐厅、美国退伍军人协会餐厅或索尼克餐厅,而是去那些提供精美酒单的高档豪华餐厅。他们往往婚姻稳定;他们努力工作,是称职的父母,婚后生育子女;而且他们通常加入多个社会团体。随着社会阶层的下降,人们离这些特征也越来越远。许多男性不再工作;孩子们没有稳定的家庭生活;宗教信仰正在消亡;社区的社会性正在消亡。

In 2012, Charles Murray wrote a provocative book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, in which he argues that the upper class has become insulated from the rest of white society. Its members attend elite universities, intermarry, and live in separate areas, which he calls Super Zips, where neighborhoods are whiter and more Asian than others. So not only is there a cultural separation based on race, but there is also a cultural separation based on habits and income. Murray argues that the elite have become out of touch with the rest of US society. For example, they do not watch Oprah or Judge Judy; they drink wine and craft beers (in appropriate moderation); and they do not smoke. They eat out a lot, not at Dennys, the American Legion, or Sonic, but at upscale ritzy restaurants with fancy wine lists. They tend to have stable marriages; they work hard, are good parents, and have children within marriage; and often they are affiliated with a number of social groups. As one moves lower on the class ladder, one moves farther away from these characteristics. Many men don’t work; children do not have a stable family life; religion is being lost; and the social nature of the community is ending.

默里认为,问题在于精英阶层倾向于根据他们非同寻常的生活做出决定,仿佛每个人都和他们一样。这一点很重要,因为精英阶层在社会决策中拥有不成比例的权力。默里认为试图通过政府来解决问题只会使情况恶化,真正需要的是一场“公民大觉醒”,让精英阶层与其他阶层重新融合,并帮助将默里认为对社会有益的精英价值观传播给其他阶层。无论默里的“解决方案”是否正确,许多评论员都认为,他对美国社会分裂加剧的判断符合他们的认知,这个问题需要进入公众辩论。

The problem, according to Murray, is that the elite tend to make decisions on the basis of their atypical lives, as if everyone were like them. This is important because the elite hold a disproportionate amount of power over decisions that society makes. Murray argues that attempts to fix the situation through government only make it worse, and that what is needed is a “civic great awakening” that will reintegrate the elite with the other classes and help spread the elite values, which Murray sees as useful values for a society, to other classes. Whether or not Murray’s “solution” is the right one, a number of commentators have found that his diagnosis that the United States is becoming more separated fits their perceptions, and that this issue needs to enter the public debate.

图 12.2社会阶层。社会学家对于美国究竟有多少个阶层意见不一,因为阶层之间重叠程度很高,而且没有明显的界限。不过,通常可以划分出五到六个基本社会阶层。(来源:美国国家教育统计中心)

Figure 12.2Social classes. Sociologists do not completely agree about how many classes there are in the United States because classes overlap considerably and there are not sharp breaks between them. It is generally possible, however, to identify five or six basic social classes. (Source: National Center for Education Statistics)

社会流动性

Social Mobility

任何阶级制度都与民主理想中平等的生存、自由和追求幸福的机会存在某种程度的冲突。当然,下层阶级的孩子无法享有与上层阶级孩子同等的机会。在美国,我们尽量避免用“下层阶级”和“上层阶级”来思考,但不可否认的是,有些人在经济和社会地位上确实比其他人优越。

Any class system is somewhat inconsistent with the democratic ideal of equal opportunities for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Certainly, lower-class children do not have the same opportunities as those in the upper classes. In the United States, we try to avoid thinking in terms of “low class” and “high class,” but there is no escaping the fact that some people are economically and socially better off than some other people.

这种情况之所以能为大多数美国人所接受,是因为美国有一个开放的阶级体系——在这个体系中,阶级界限并不明确,对许多人来说,向上流动的可能性非常大。重要的因素并非各个群体的规模或差距,而是个人在各个群体之间流动的能力。社会流动性——即一个人在社会中提高(或降低)其社会和经济地位的相对难易程度——在美国被认为相当高,因此处于社会底层的人们可以想象他们的孩子会向上层流动。直到最近,大多数观察家仍然认为美国具有相当高的社会流动性。这种对美国社会具有社会流动性的观点是由一位 19 世纪的美国小说家捕捉到的,他以自己的名字霍雷肖·阿尔杰(Horatio Alger)命名了那些普通美国人通过承诺、奉献、勤奋、教育、节俭、道德正直以及通常来自家人、朋友、老师、雇主以及奖学金和政府项目的帮助来提高其社会和经济地位的故事。2向下流动也是一种可能性,尽管没有太多证据,但许多人认为,被宠坏的游手好闲的富人的孩子最终会沦为贫民窟。50 年前,社会科学家发现存在显著的向上流动性。在 20 世纪 60 年代的一项研究中,Gerhard Lenski 发现,1945 年至 1965 年间,33% 的男性实现了向上流动。当时向下流动的现象显而易见,但其发生率并未得到充分记录。然而,到了 20 世纪 70 年代,美国人对向上流动的预期开始下降。Featherman 和 Hauser 在 1978 年进行的一项研究发现,21 岁至 53 岁年龄段的人群中,有四分之一的人的职业水平下滑至低于第一份工作。Greg J. Duncan 及其同事进行的一项研究比较了 1968-1979 年和 1980-1987 年期间的流动性,发现下层阶级向上流动的发生率下降,而高收入水平人群向上流动的发生率上升,导致中产阶级规模缩小。

What made this situation acceptable to most Americans was that the United States had an open class system—a system in which class lines were not definite, and for many people the possibilities of moving up were excellent. The important element was not the size of the various groups or the disparity, but the ability of individuals to move among the groups. The degree of social mobility—the comparative ease with which a person in a society can improve (or worsen) his or her social and economic status—was considered quite large in the United States, so people at the bottom could imagine their kids moving to the top. Until recently, most observers viewed the United States as having significant social mobility. This view of a socially mobile US society was captured by a nineteenth-century US novelist who gave his name, Horatio Alger, to stories of ordinary Americans who improved their social and economic status through commitment, dedication, hard work, education, thrift, moral rectitude, and, very often, help from family, friends, teachers, employers, and scholarships and government programs.2 Downward mobility is also a possibility, and although there is not much proof, many believe that the spoiled children of the idle rich will eventually land in the gutter. Fifty years ago, social scientists found that significant upward mobility existed. In a 1960s study, Gerhard Lenski found that 33 percent of all males in the period from 1945 to 1965 were upwardly mobile. Downward mobility at that time was clearly present but its incidence was not well documented. However, in the 1970s, the US expectation of upward mobility began to erode. A study by Featherman and Hauser in 1978 found that one-fourth of all persons age twenty-one to fifty-three had slid to an occupational level below their first jobs. A study by Greg J. Duncan and colleagues compared mobility between the 1968-1979 and 1980-1987 periods and found that the incidence of upward mobility for those in the lower class declined, while upward mobility for those at the upper income levels rose, leading to a shrinking middle class.

21世纪初,社会科学家布伦特·布拉茨伯格和他的同事发现了进一步的侵蚀,并发现欧洲的社会流动性高于美国。具体来说,他们按0到1的等级对各国进行了排名,0表示完全流动性(儿童的收入与父母收入无关),1表示没有流动性(儿童的收入与父母收入相同)。他们发现,在儿子方面,瑞典得分为0.2;英国得分为0.36,美国得分为0.54,这表明美国的社会流动性只有瑞典和英国的一半左右。底层的情况更糟;出生于美国收入分配底层五分之一家庭的孩子最不可能向上流动。此外,美国收入和财富不平等的大幅加剧加剧了这种情况,富人越来越富,而穷人基本上停滞不前。他们的收入几乎没有增加,甚至有所下降。因此,社会科学家巴什卡尔·马宗德(Bhashkar Mazumder)在2014年研究这一问题时发现,美国的社会流动性有限,孩子们很难向上爬。黑人的情况尤其艰难;在低收入家庭出生的黑人中,只有29%的人能够进入中产阶级或更高阶层。

In the early 2000s, social scientist Brent Bratsberg and his colleagues found further erosion, and discovered that Europe had more social mobility than did the United States. Specifically, they ranked countries on a scale of 0 to 1, with 0 meaning perfect mobility (a child’s income bears no relation to parental income) and 1 meaning no mobility (a child’s income is identical to parental income). They found that for sons, Sweden scored a .2; Britain scored a .36 and the United States scored a .54, suggesting that the United States had only about half as much social mobility as did Sweden and Britain. The situation was worse at the bottom; children born to families in the bottom fifth of the US income distribution were the least likely to move up. Further, this situation was exacerbated by the large increase in income and wealth inequality in the United States, where the rich have been getting much richer and the poor have been essentially treading water. Their incomes have hardly increased, or have even fallen. Thus, when social scientist Bhashkar Mazumder studied the issue in 2014, he found that social mobility was limited in the United States and that it was difficult for children to rise up. The situation was particularly difficult for blacks; of those born to low-income families only 29 percent would rise to middle class or higher.

社会流动性的这些变化有可能破坏美国的政治和社会稳定,因为这种稳定很大程度上建立在这样一种信念之上:尽管美国存在巨大的不平等,但这种不平等是可以接受的,因为它们反映了富人的努力。在美国,人们仍然相信,只要努力工作,低收入人群也能向上流动。这种信念正在逐渐消退,在进步主义者看来,这种信念已成空谈,导致一些人自称是社会主义者。许多人将自称社会主义者的总统候选人伯尼·桑德斯在2016年初选中获得的巨大支持归因于人们认为社会流动性正在下降。

These changes in social mobility have the potential to undermine the political and social stability of the United States because much of that stability is based on a belief that, although there are large inequalities in the United States, such inequalities are acceptable, since they reflect effort on the part of the rich. There remains a belief in the United States that, with hard work, people with low incomes can move up. That belief is eroding, and among Progressives is seen as a fiction, leading some to declare themselves socialists. Many attributed the large support that the self-declared socialist presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, received in the 2016 primaries to the sense that social mobility was decreasing.

关于社会流动性程度的争论,伴随着关于缺乏流动性原因的争论。像詹姆斯·赫克曼这样的经济学家认为家庭结构和支持是一个重要因素。缺乏这种支持的少数族裔,例如黑人,往往难以向上流动;而拥有这种支持的少数族裔,例如亚裔,即使生活贫困,也往往能够向上流动。像拉吉·切蒂这样的经济学家则认为地理位置更为重要,并认为邮政编码决定命运。究竟谁对谁错?数据尚无定论。

The debate about the degree of social mobility is accompanied by a debate about the cause of the lack of mobility. Economists such as James Heckman see family structure and support as an important factor. Minorities, such as Blacks, who don’t have such support tend not to move up; minorities that have that support, such as Asians, tend to move up even if they are poor. Economists such as Raj Chetty, see geography as much more important, and argue that Zip Code is destiny. Who’s right? The data are inconclusive.

谁是向上流动的人?

Who Are the Upwardly Moible?

尽管整体向上流动性有所下降,但如果一个人具备某些特质,仍然有可能向上流动。针对那些实现向上流动性的人的研究发现了一些相关的特质:种族、性别、独生子女(或第一个孩子),以及对延迟满足的信念,即一个人愿意放弃眼前的快乐,以换取未来的目标。第一个

Although overall upward mobility has decreased, it is still possible to move up if a person has certain traits. Studies of people who have achieved upward mobility have identified certain related traits: race, gender, being an only (or first) child, and a belief in deferred gratification, which is when a person is willing to trade off an immediate pleasure for a future goal. The first

其中第二个特征非常重要,因此我们将在“歧视”主题下另设一章进行讨论。第三个特征可能与收入有关(研究发现,富人更有可能只生一个孩子),并且不受个人控制。然而,最后一个特征——延迟满足——可能是最重要的,正如有时被称为“棉花糖”的研究表明的那样。

and second of these are so important that we treat them in a separate chapter under the subject of discrimination. The third is probably related to income (it has been found that rich people are more likely to have only one child) and is not within an individual’s control. The last trait, however— deferred gratification—can be and is probably the most important, as demonstrated in what is sometimes called the Marshmallow study.

1972年,一位心理学家做了一项实验。他给四个孩子一块棉花糖,并告诉他们,如果他们愿意等二十分钟再吃,就给他们两块。有些孩子等了,有些则没有。他追踪了这些孩子的生活变化,发现那些等待的孩子心理适应能力更强,更可靠,而且在学校的表现也比那些没有等待的孩子好得多。这意味着:延迟满足的能力是决定成功的重要因素。

In 1972, a psychologist ran an experiment in which he gave four-year-olds a marshmallow and told them that he would give them two if they would wait for twenty minutes before eating it. Some waited, and some did not. He then followed their progress through life and found that those who waited were psychologically better adjusted, more dependable, and did significantly better in school than those who did not wait. The implication: The ability to delay gratification is an important factor in determining success.

延迟满足的信念究竟能在多大程度上被培养,目前尚无定论。你的信念很大程度上是通过父母持续不断的支持性反馈而传承下来的,而到了你上大学的年龄,这些信念很可能已经成型。

How much a belief in deferred gratification can be fostered is debatable. Your beliefs are, in large part, transmitted from your parents through continually supportive feedback, and by the time you reach college age, these beliefs are probably set.

因此,对你们大多数人来说,能否向上流动可能早已注定,而且部分地融入了你们的性格之中。当然,运气(比如在正确的时间出现在正确的地点找到工作)也起着重要作用,许多拥有向上流动特质的人可能会感到失望。例如,如果你在参加大学入学考试的前一天晚上遇到了危机,你的成绩可能很差,这可能决定了你是否能获得奖学金。运气不好固然令人不快,但它却是生活中的常态,不应被视为罕见。没有人说过生活是公平的。

Thus, for most of you, whether you are to be upwardly mobile may have already been determined and is partially built into your personality. Of course, luck (such as being in the right place at the right time for a job) plays an important role, and many people who have the traits associated with being upwardly mobile may find themselves disappointed. For example, if you had a crisis the night before you took the college boards, you might have done poorly on them, which might have played a role in whether you won a scholarship. Bad luck is not pleasant, but it is a fact of life and should not be considered unusual. No one ever said life is fair.

关于流动性的讨论常常忽略一个简单的事实:顶层的空间总是有限的。当我们谈论社会流动性时,我们往往会想到在社会阶层中向上流动的机会,但我们必须记住,当一些人或他们的孩子向上流动时,其他人或他们的孩子可能会向下流动。

Discussions of mobility often overlook one simple fact: Room at the top is always limited. When we talk about social mobility, we are apt to think of opportunities to move upward on the social scale, but we must remember that as some people, or their children, move up, others, or their children, are likely to move down.

哪些条件促成了社会流动性?或许其中最重要的因素是社会变革。在一个不断变化的社会中,旧秩序总是被打破,获取财富或地位的新途径不断涌现。过去200年来,工业化及其不断更新的生产方式和商业组织形式,为人们提供了攀登经济和社会阶梯的机会。

What are the conditions that contribute to social mobility? Probably most important of all is social change. In a changing society, the old order is always being disturbed, and new ways of achieving wealth or position keep appearing. For the past 200 years, industrialization, with its ever newer methods of production and types of business organization, has provided opportunities to climb the economic and social ladder.

现在,全球化正在改变着人们的生活。从全球视角来看,美国工人,即使是贫困工人,也处于收入分配阶梯的高端。人们渴望移民美国,即使这意味着要接受一份“低薪”工作,因为这份低薪的美国工作对他们来说就是一份“高薪”工作。随着美国公司越来越愿意(或由于全球竞争而被迫)将生产转移到世界各地的低薪国家,以及低薪国家越来越多地发展自己的公司与美国公司竞争,处于收入/社会底层的美国公民向上流动的途径正在减少。因此,我们可以预见,未来几年,社会流动性将越来越令人担忧。

What’s changing now for people is globalization. From a global perspective, US workers, even poor ones, are on the high end of the income distribution ladder. People want to immigrate to the United States even if it means accepting a “low-wage” job because that low-wage US job is a “high-wage” job for them. With US companies increasingly willing to (or forced to, because of global competition) shift production to low-wage countries throughout the world, and with low-wage countries increasingly developing their own companies that compete with US companies, the avenues for US citizens at the bottom of the income/social scale to move up are decreasing. Thus, we can expect that social mobility will be of increasing concern over the coming years.

教育与社会流动

Education and Social Mobility

从一个阶层晋升到另一个阶层的最佳途径之一是接受教育(见表12.1)。教育使个人获得原本无法获得的工作机会,从而提高他们的收入。

One of the best ways to advance from one class to another is through education (see Table 12.1). Education allows individuals access to job possibilities that otherwise would not be open to them, and in doing so it raises their income.

一种无法提升阶级的方法就是只顾增加收入而不关注其他问题。社会科学家苏珊·梅耶尔开发了一个统计模型,用于预测如果孩子家庭的年收入翻倍,其人生成功前景将发生怎样的变化。她发现,如果收入增长是孩子生活中唯一的因素,

One method that doesn’t lead to class advancement is to increase income without attention to other issues. Social scientist Susan Mayer developed a statistical model that predicted what would happen to a child’s prospects for success in life if the annual income of the child’s family were doubled. She found that if the increased income were the only factor in the life of

表 12.1 2021 年应届大学毕业生起薪(按所选学科)
类别 2021年平均工资
工程 69,188美元
数学和科学 62,177美元
商业 57,657美元
社会科学 57,310美元
人文学科 56,651美元
通讯 52,056美元
戏剧和舞台艺术 44,538美元
工作室艺术 41,762美元
早期儿童教育 39,097美元
来源: NACE 薪资调查。

在这样的家庭中长大的孩子,成年后成功的机会几乎不会有任何提升。智力、决心、健康的身体和合作的意愿才是预测未来成功的更佳因素。

a child in that family, the child’s chances of becoming a successful adult would hardly improve at all. Intelligence, determination, good health, and a willingness to cooperate were far better predictors of advancement.

美国的阶级意识

Class Consciousness in the United States

大多数美国人缺乏高度的阶级意识,也就是说,他们不太在意自己的社会地位以及他人相对于他们的评价。他们的野心通常表现为对更令人满意的工作、更高的收入或更高的个人声望的渴望。由此产生的社会地位的任何变化通常都是次要的或完全偶然的。相对而言,很少有美国人强烈渴望进入更高的社会阶层,除非这能帮助他们实现其他目标。

Most Americans are not highly class conscious, that is, overly concerned about their status in society and the standing of other people in relation to them. Ambition usually takes the form of a desire for a more satisfying job, more income, or more personal prestige. Any resulting change in social status usually is secondary or wholly incidental. Relatively few Americans have a strong desire to move into a higher social class except insofar as this may help them to achieve other objectives.

为什么美国人相对来说阶级意识如此淡薄?部分原因是历史原因。我们从未有过世袭贵族,而早期历史的快速发展和扩张导致了相当大的社会流动性。尽管我们的许多总统都出身富裕或贵族家庭,但也有一些总统出身卑微,这绝非巧合。

Why are Americans so comparatively free of class consciousness? Partly, the reasons are historical. We never did have a hereditary nobility, and throughout our early history rapid growth and expansion resulted in considerable social mobility. It is more than a coincidence that, although a number of our presidents have come from wealthy or aristocratic families, some have had very humble origins.

导致阶级意识低下的一个因素是生活水平的普遍提高。即使人们的社会地位没有改变,但当收入增加、生活方式得到改善时,他们就会感到自己正在进步。

One factor that has tended to keep class consciousness at a low level is the general rise in standards of living that has occurred. Even though people were not changing their position in the social scale, they felt they were making progress when their incomes rose and when they could improve their way of life.

另一个倾向于降低阶级意识和不满情绪的因素是横向流动性,即从一份工作跳槽到另一份工作,而且通常是跳槽到更受欢迎的工作的机会。横向流动性之所以重要,是因为虽然美国公民的阶级意识并不强,但他们具有群体意识,并且强烈渴望融入“群体”。这种渴望始于早年,当时学校里形成了小团体,学生被划分为书呆子、瘾君子、预科生和运动员等。广告利用了我们的群体意识,将商品描绘成能为购买者提供群体声望的商品。名人代言在广告中很常见,其理念是,如果某个电影或体育明星使用该产品,而你也使用,你就会融入他们所属的群体。看看你穿的鞋子或衣服。你买它们是因为它们是你能找到的最便宜但仍然舒适的衣服吗?还是因为它们让你感到“融入”?这种横向流动性让人们感到自己在进步,即使这种变化对收入或社会地位的影响不大。

Another factor that has tended to reduce class consciousness and discontent is horizontal mobility, the opportunities that exist for moving from one job to another, and often to a better-liked job. Horizontal mobility is important because, while US citizens are not especially class-conscious, they are group-conscious and their desire to be in the “in group” is strong. This desire begins early in life as cliques form in schools, and students are classified as nerds, druggies, preps, and jocks, for instance. Advertising takes advantage of our group consciousness, portraying goods as providing group cachet to the buyer. Celebrity endorsements are common in advertising, under the assumption that if some movie or sports star uses the product, if you also use it, you will fit in with the group to which they belong. Take a look at the shoes or clothes you are wearing. Did you buy them because they were the least expensive but still comfortable clothes you could find? Or did you buy them because they made you feel “in”? This horizontal mobility gives people the feeling of making progress, even though the change has little effect on income or social status.

随着全球化,阻碍阶级意识提升的因素有所减少。低收入人群的工资没有上涨,横向流动也愈发困难。迄今为止,这些变化尚未导致阶级意识的提升,但未来很可能会有所提升。

With globalization, the factors militating against class consciousness have been somewhat reduced. Wages for lower-income individuals are not rising, and horizontal mobility is getting harder. To date, these changes have not led to an increase in class consciousness, but they may well do so in the future.

阶级意识、马克思和韦伯

Class Consciousness, Marx, and Weber

十九世纪共产主义之父、社会学奠基人之一卡尔·马克思在批判资本主义社会时,将工业社会的人口划分为两大阶级:资本家,即生产资料的所有者;以及无产阶级,即受资本家剥削的工人。无产阶级的劳动被用来为资本家牟取私利,而丝毫不顾及工人的需求。马克思认为,对工人日益加重的剥削将导致无产阶级阶级意识的增强。

In his criticism of capitalist society, Karl Marx, the nineteenth-century father of communism and one of the founders of the fi eld of sociology, divided the populations of industrial societies into two classes—capitalists, or owners of the means of production, and the proletariat, or workers, who were exploited by the capitalists. The proletariat’s labor was used to further the capitalists’ own profits, without consideration of the workers’ needs. Marx felt that the increasing exploitation of workers would lead to an increasing class consciousness among the proletariat.

马克思认为,在资本主义剥削下,工人的境况将日益恶化。最终,工人将奋起反抗,夺取生产资料,建立“无产阶级专政”下的社会主义国家。事实上,与马克思的预测截然相反,大多数工业国家的劳动人民的生活水平反而趋于提高。

Marx believed that under capitalistic exploitation the condition of the workers would become worse and worse. Eventually workers would rise up in revolt, seize the means of production, and establish a socialist state under the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Actually, the standard of living of the working people in most industrial countries, quite contrary to Marx’s prediction, tended to rise.

马克思的阶级划分并非唯一的划分。马克斯·韦伯,一位直言不讳地批评马克思观点的人,认为财产并非阶级的唯一基础。相反,阶级是由三个“p ”——财产、声望和权力——决定的。韦伯更为普遍的阶级概念被众多社会学家所接受,但他们对如何量化声望和权力的看法往往大相径庭。我们将使用韦伯的概念。

Marx’s division of the classes is not the only division. Max Weber, an outspoken critic of Marx’s views, argued that property is not the sole basis of class. Instead class is determined by the three p’s—property, prestige, and power. Weber’s more general concept of class is accepted by numerous sociologists, but their views of how to quantify prestige and power often differ substantially. We shall use Weber’s concept.

经济和社会不平等

Economic and Social Inequlaity

我们关注个人的货币收入,因为我们的数据收集基于此。真正的不平等取决于更多因素。例如,假设你面临两个选择:健康状况不佳,年收入10万美元;健康状况良好,年收入2.5万美元。你会选择哪一个?很可能是后者,因为人们的真实收入涵盖了他们各个方面的情况。由于我们无法衡量真实收入,大多数研究都关注货币收入和个人生活水平。

We focus on an individual’s monetary income because that is what we collect figures on. True inequality depends on much more. For example, say you have a choice of poor health and an income of $100,000 per year or good health and $25,000 per year. Which would you choose? Probably the latter, for people’s true income includes all aspects of their position. Because we cannot measure true income, most studies focus on monetary income and individuals’ standard of living.

即使我们关注货币收入,我们仍然难以确定收入不平等究竟有多严重。例如,如今美国有多少贫困人口?这取决于如何定义贫困这个词。就印度或中国的贫困而言,甚至就一百年前美国或欧洲的贫困而言,我们的贫困人口非常少。如今在美国,几乎没有人死于饥饿,但在非洲,却有数万,有时甚至数十万人死于饥饿。

Even if we focus on monetary income, we still have difficulty in determining how much of a problem income inequality is. For example, how much poverty do we have in the United States today? That depends on how the word is defined. In terms of what poverty means in India or China, or even in terms of what it meant in this country or Europe a hundred years ago, we have very little poverty. Almost no one in the United States today actually dies of starvation, but tens, and sometimes hundreds, of thousands do in Africa.

街头的无家可归者。 © GerryRousseau/Alamy Stock Photo

Homeless person on the streets. © GerryRousseau/Alamy Stock Photo

美国的财富。 © a katz/Shutterstock.com

Riches in the United States. © a katz/Shutterstock.com

确实,在美国的城市里,无家可归的人会睡在街头或各种临时住所,比如大型包装箱,但这通常是由于其他类型的社会问题(例如,独立精神发展到精神病的极端情况,或将能力有限者从精神病院释放的政策)。这并不是因为没有项目或资金来收容这些人群。

It is true that homeless persons sleep on the streets or in all kinds of makeshift shelters such as large packing cartons in the cities of the United States, but this is most often because of other kinds of social problems (a spirit of independence carried to psychotic extremes, for instance, or policies of releasing marginally competent people from mental facilities). It is not because there are no programs or funds available to shelter this population.

纽约市工会和劳工活动人士举行示威,要求将最低时薪提高到 15 美元。 © a katz/Shutterstock.com

Union and labor activists in New York City demonstrating for a $15 minimum wage. © a katz/Shutterstock.com

另一方面,许多人依靠公共援助生活,许多没有领取此类援助的人收入微薄,不得不生活在令人沮丧或不安全的环境中,衣着破旧,食物廉价。他们无力承担旅行、娱乐或教育的费用。如果失业或遭遇重病等紧急情况,他们唯一的求助对象就是公共援助或慈善事业。

On the other hand, large numbers of people depend on public assistance to live, and many who do not receive such payments have incomes so small that they must live in depressing or unsafe surroundings, wear shabby clothes, and buy cheap food. They cannot afford to spend money for travel, entertainment, or education, and if they are out of work or if an emergency such as serious illness arises, their only recourse is public aid or charity.

1996年,国会通过了一项福利改革法,旨在大幅减少长期依赖公共救济的人数,并通过教育、职业培训、儿童保育设施和医疗援助等措施帮助他们改善经济状况。这项法律的两个结果是,它使数百万低收入人群找到了工作,并大幅减少了公共救济的领取人数。然而,一些找到工作的人并没有赚到足够的钱来养活自己和家人,因此仍然有大量低收入人群。尽管其效果仍在持续监测中,但大多数观察人士认为,公共援助改革在减少依赖福利的人数并将他们引导到更有生产力的活动中取得了成功。但这一成功取决于对法律进行微调,以消除其一些最严重的负面影响。

In 1996, Congress passed a welfare reform law designed to drastically reduce the number of people on long-term public assistance and to help them improve their economic status through measures such as education, job training, child care facilities, and medical assistance. Two results of this law have been to put millions of low-income people in jobs and to reduce public assistance rolls significantly. However, some of the people who found jobs did not make enough money to support themselves and their families, and there is still a large population of low-income people. Although its effects are continuing to be monitored, most observers see that public assistance reform was a success in reducing the number of people on welfare and in channeling them into more productive activities. But that success was dependent on the law being fine-tuned to eliminate some of its harshest effects.

收入不平等的原因

Causes of Income Inequality

收入差异直接源于三个方面:个人服务收入的差异、财产拥有量的差异以及政府转移支付的差异。其中,个人收入的差异最为重要。这些差异部分源于职业,部分源于从事各职业人员的个人素质。决定不同职业群体收入差异的最基本因素是需求和供给。

Differences in income arise directly from three sources: variations in earnings from personal services, differences in the amounts of property owned, and variations in transfer payments from government. Differences in the earnings of individuals are the most important. These differences are based partly on occupation and partly on the personal qualities of those engaged in each occupation. The most basic of the factors that determine income variations between occupational groups is demand and supply.

一般来说,一方面,那些需要特殊才能和长期培训而不易进入的职业,由于工人的供给相对于需求较小,因此薪酬较高。另一方面,那些被归类为普通劳动的职业,任何人只要能力或培训较少即可进入,薪酬往往较低。但在同一职业类别中,个人收入能力往往存在很大差异,尤其是在较高的专业和管理层面。

In general, on the one hand, occupations that are not easy to enter because they require special aptitudes and long training are highly paid because the supply of workers is small relative to the demand. On the other hand, occupations classified as common labor, which anyone can enter with relatively little ability or training, tend to be poorly paid. But within each occupational group, there are often great differences in individual earning power, especially at the higher professional and managerial levels.

表 12.2a 至 2.2d 显示了按家庭比例、职业、代表州以及种族、性别和家庭状况划分的收入分布情况。可以看出,收入在总体人群中分配不均,并且也因居住地、种族、性别和职业的不同而存在分配不均。

Tables 12.2a to 2.2d show the distribution of income by percentage of families; by occupation; by representative states; and by race, gender, and household status. As you can see, income is distributed unequally in the general population and also by the place where one lives, by race, by gender, and by occupation.

无就业复苏与全球化

Jobless Recovery and Globalization

过去三十年,美国经济受到全球化和巨额贸易逆差的显著影响。全球化对低技能工人的影响最为严重,随着企业将生产转移到劳动力成本低得多的海外地区,他们的工作岗位消失了。但全球化对高层管理人员和高技能工人最为有利,他们受益于低成本的进口商品,并且对他们的服务需求和薪酬也不断增长。其结果是,美国可衡量的不平等现象大幅加剧;富人越来越富,穷人越来越穷。在此期间,最富有的1%人群的收入份额与三十年前相比翻了一番。美国政府国会预算办公室的一项研究发现,从1979年到2007年,最富有的1%人群的平均税后收入(经通胀调整后)增长了275%,但最贫穷的20%人群的收入仅增长了18%。虽然 2008 年开始的经济衰退减缓了高收入者的相对收益,但它确实

Over the past thirty years, the US economy has been significantly affected by globalization and large trade deficits. Globalization has been hardest on the least-skilled workers, who have seen their jobs evaporate as companies have moved production abroad to places where labor costs are much lower. But globalization has been the most kind to upper-level management and highly skilled workers, who have benefited from the low cost of imported goods, and also have seen the demand for their services and their compensation grow. The result has been a large increase in measured inequality in the United States; the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer. During this time period, the top 1 percent has doubled their share of income compared to thirty years ago. A study by the government’s Congressional Budget Office found that from 1979 to 2007, average inflation-adjusted, after-tax income grew by 275 percent for the top 1 percent, but for the bottom 20 percent, it rose by only 18 percent. While the recession starting in 2008 slowed the relative gains of the top income earners, it did

表 12.2a 相对收入衡量指标:底层五分之一人口的上限,2020 年
底层 20% 26,000美元
底层 40% 52,000美元
底部 60% 82,000美元
底层 80% 134,000美元
表 12.2b 2020 年各行业平均年收入
医疗保健从业人员和技术职业 83,630美元
教育、培训和图书馆 57,710美元
保护服务 49,880美元
个人护理和服务 31,260美元
表 12.2c 2020 年各地区家庭收入中位数
美国 63,179美元
东北 70,113美元
西方 69,520美元
中西部 64,069美元
57,299美元
表 12.2d 2020 年按种族、性别和家庭状况划分的家庭货币收入中位数
亚洲 98,174美元
高加索人 76,057美元
西班牙裔(任何种族) 56,113美元
黑色的 45,438美元
单身男性户主 67,304美元
单身女性户主 49,214美元
资料来源:美国人口普查局。美国社区调查。作者推断。

这种情况无法阻止,而且随着近年来经济的增长,大部分收益都流向了高收入者。2020年的疫情加剧了这一趋势,尽管政府为帮助受疫情影响者而推出的项目部分抵消了这一趋势。

not stop it, and as the economy has grown in recent years, most of the gains have gone to top income earners. This trend was exacerbated by the pandemic of 2020, although it was partially offset by government programs to assist those hurt in the pandemic.

贫困测量

Measuring Poverty

为了衡量一个国家的贫困程度,我们必须定义“贫困”一词。这并不容易。在美国,社会保障局和人口普查局试图通过确定贫困线来实现这一点,即维持高于贫困线生活水平所需的最低收入。显然,个人的贫困线会低于家庭的贫困线,而且不同规模的家庭的贫困线也会有所不同。它还会随着生活成本的波动而变化。

In order to measure poverty in a country, we must define the term. It isn’t easy to do so. In the United States, the Social Security Administration and the Bureau of the Census attempt to do this by determining the poverty threshold, that is, the minimum amount of income needed to maintain a living standard above the poverty level. Obviously, the poverty threshold will be lower for an individual than for a family, and it will differ for families of different size. It will also change with fluctuations in the cost of living.

要超越贫困线,个人或家庭必须拥有足够的收入来获得维持健康的食物、衣服和住所,并留出一些余地用于其他必要的支出。在任何时间和地点,最低收入的必要性无法精确确定,因此任何具体的贫困线在某种程度上都是任意的。然而,经过仔细客观地权衡各种事实,确定的贫困线具有足够的意义,足以发挥作用。每年,人口普查局都会公布单身(“无亲属关系”)个人和不同规模家庭的贫困线。贫困线的设定非常重要,因为该水平决定了哪些家庭可以获得政府援助。

To be above the poverty level, an individual or family must have enough income to obtain food, clothing, and shelter that will maintain health, plus some margin for other necessary expenditures. Just what minimum income is essential at any given time and place cannot be determined with any great precision, and hence any specific poverty threshold is to some degree arbitrary. However, after a careful and objective weighing of the facts, the determined cutoff can have enough meaning to be useful. Each year, the Bureau of the Census publishes poverty thresholds for single (“unrelated”) individuals and for families of various sizes. The level at which the poverty level is set is important because that level determines which families receive government assistance.

根据人口普查估计,2020 年生活在贫困中的美国人总数约为 3700 万,占 11.4%。对于一个四口之家(不包括阿拉斯加和夏威夷)来说,这意味着 2020 年的年收入为 26,200 美元。对于单身人士来说,大约是 12,740 美元。如图 12.3所示,贫困人口比例取决于种族和民族。黑人和西班牙裔贫困的可能性是白人的两倍多。自 2018 年以来,由于美国经济繁荣,贫困人口数量有所下降。2020 年,经济繁荣戛然而止,但政府应对疫情的计划降低了贫困率。这些计划和疫情的长期影响还有待观察。

According to census estimates, the total number of Americans who lived in poverty in 2020 was about 37 million, or 11.4 percent. For a family of four (excluding Alaska and Hawaii), this represented an annual income of $26,200 in 2020. For a single person, it is about $12,740. As you can see in Figure 12.3, the percentage of people in poverty depends on race and ethnicity. Blacks and Hispanics are more than twice as likely as whites to be poor. Since 2018, the number of people in poverty fell because of the economic boom in the US. That boom came to a halt in 2020, but government programs to counter the pandemic reduced measured poverty. What the long-run effects of these programs and the pandemic are remain to be seen.

这些衡量美国贫困人口数量的指标应该被接受,但需要有所保留。毫无疑问,其中许多人的收入只是暂时极低,或者有储蓄可以补充当前收入,或者拥有房产,并且居住在能够以低收入过上相当不错的生活的社区。或者年轻人是否得到了父母的帮助。然而,即便考虑到所有这些因素,我们仍然清楚地看到,这个国家仍然存在着大量的贫困现象。

These measures of the number of Americans who live in poverty should be accepted with some reservations. Undoubtedly, many of those included had incomes that were only temporarily extremely low, or had savings with which to supplement current income, or owned homes and lived in communities where they could get along reasonably well on a small income, or were young people getting help from parents. However, after all such allowances are made, it is clear that a substantial amount of poverty exists in this country.

图 12.3各种族贫困率。(数据来源:美国人口普查局)

Figure 12.3Percentage poverty by race. (Source: US Bureau of the Census)

社会和经济不平等加剧

Increasing Social and Economic Inequality

如果我们所说的贫困仅仅是为每个人提供足够的收入来维持物质生活和安全,那么像美国这样富裕的国家似乎应该能够消除贫困。3为此,美国制定了各种计划,包括公共援助、失业保险、医疗保险、社会保障和补充保障收入(SSI)。从很多方面来看,这些计划都取得了成功,但也带来了新的问题。

It would seem that a country as rich as the United States should be able to eliminate poverty, if what we mean by that is simply providing everyone with enough income for physical comfort and security.3 To do so, the United States has instituted a variety of programs, including public assistance, unemployment insurance, Medicare, Social Security, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). In many ways, these programs have succeeded, but they have also introduced new problems.

在美国,贫困与在发展中国家的贫困截然不同;贫困与拥有空调和有线电视是一致的。话虽如此,也应该注意到,大多数人看待自己在社会中的地位是相对的,而不是绝对的。相对而言,在过去的二十五年里,不平等现象一直在大幅加剧。在这二十五年里,家庭收入中位数增长了约20%,但同期最富有的1%人口的收入中位数却增长了200%。此外,大多数家庭收入中位数在此期间的上涨仅仅是因为越来越多的女性进入了劳动力市场。工人的工资(经通胀调整后)实际上下降了。结果是,美国的收入不平等程度远高于20世纪70年代。在财富方面,情况更加不平等。最富有的1%人口控制着全国30%以上的财富。而最贫穷的50%人口控制着不到2%的财富。

Being poor in the United States is quite different from being poor in a developing country; it is consistent with having air conditioners and cable TV. That said, it should also be noted that most people view their positions in society relatively, not absolutely. And relatively, over the past twenty-five years, inequality has been increasing substantially. Median family income has risen by about 20 percent over those twenty-five years, but the median income of the top 1 percent has increased by 200 percent over that same period. Moreover, the median income of most families has risen over that period only because women have entered the workforce in increasing numbers. The wage (adjusted for inflation) that a worker makes has actually fallen. The result is that US income is much more unequal than it was in the 1970s. In terms of wealth, the situation is even more unequal. The top 1 percent of the population controls more than 30 percent of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 50 percent controls less than 2 percent.

这些变化的原因既有结构性的,也有政策性的。从结构性角度来看,全球竞争对低收入、非专业化工人的打击最为严重。他们面临着一个艰难的选择:降低工资,否则你的工作将被外包——要么被转移到美国以外的低薪工人,要么被转移到愿意以低得多的工资做同样工作的低薪新移民。随着新技术使越来越多的工作被外包,拥有专业技能的高薪工人现在也开始感受到全球竞争的压力。

The reasons for these changes are both structural and policy-related. Structurally, global competition has hit low-income, nonspecialized workers hardest. They were presented with a difficult choice: Lower your wage or your job will be outsourced—transferred to a low-wage worker outside the United States, or transferred to a low-wage recent immigrant willing to do the same work for much lower pay. High-wage workers with specialized skills are also now beginning to feel the pressure of global competitiveness, as new technologies have allowed more and more of their jobs to be outsourced.

这些加剧不平等的结构性力量因政策变化而加剧——美国所得税的累进税率大幅降低,遗产税下调,以及资本利得税(一种主要由富人承担的资产增值税)的下调。这些政策变化的支持者声称,它们保持了美国经济的增长,关注的焦点不应放在不平等问题上,而应放在美国经济的整体健康状况上。批评者则认为,这些政策变化是对富人的馈赠——劫贫济富。

These structural forces pushing for inequality have been compounded by policy changes— the progressivity of the US income tax has been significantly reduced, the inheritance tax has been reduced, and the capital gains tax—a tax on the increase in value of assets that falls mainly on the rich—has been reduced. Advocates for these policy changes claim that they kept the US economy expanding, and that the focus of attention should not be on inequality but on the overall health of the US economy. Critics see the policy changes as giveaways to the rich—taking from the poor to give to the rich.

减少不平等的政策

Policies to Reduce Inequality

普遍认为应该减少经济不平等。虽然这种观点本身并无正确性,但却被广泛接受,这引出了一个问题:如何做到这一点?高额累进税是解决不平等问题的一种方法,但它往往会损害创业积极性。此外,这些税制难以执行,而且往往会滋生大量逃税和避税行为,从而误导资源配置,导致经济效率低下。当政府试图阻止这种逃税和避税行为时,这些税收往往会成为官僚主义和法律方面的噩梦。这些高度累进税制的严重问题导致了供给侧的论点,即在某些情况下降低税率实际上可以增加税收收入。即便如此,大多数经济学家认为,从技术上讲,美国有可能建立一个比现有税制更有效、更累进的税制,尽管实施该税制的政治过程通常会使其偏离理想状态,最终结果往往存在问题。归根结底:鉴于美国当前的政治气候,累进税制所能取得的成果是有限的。

The view that economic inequality should be reduced is widely shared. While there is nothing inherently correct about this view, it is prominently held, which raises the question of how to do it. High progressive taxes are one way, but they tend to hurt entrepreneurial incentives. Moreover, they are hard to enforce and they tend to create numerous evasion and avoidance schemes that misdirect resources and cause economic inefficiency. As government tries to prevent this evasion and avoidance, the taxes often become bureaucratic and legal nightmares. These serious problems with highly progressive taxes have led to the supply-side argument that in some cases lowering tax rates actually can raise tax revenues. That said, most economists believe it is technically possible to have an effective, more progressive tax system in the United States than we currently have, although the political process of implementing the system usually so distorts it from the ideal that the end result is often problematic. The bottom line: What can be achieved with a progressive tax system, given the political climate in the United States, is limited.

政府重新分配收入的另一种方式是实施扶贫项目,但这些项目也往往具有严重的负面激励效应——例如,这些项目通常设有门槛,如果你工作或收入超过一定数额,就不再符合资格。这种门槛会阻碍人们工作——为了保持项目资格,人们不去工作。正是这种负面激励效应导致了20世纪90年代的福利改革,该改革将公共援助资格期限限制在五年内,并对领取公共援助福利的人提出了工作要求。

Another way for government to redistribute income involves government programs to help the poor, but these too tend to have serious negative incentive effects—for example, they usually have a cutoff, so if you work or earn above a certain amount, you are no longer eligible. That cutoff discourages work—to stay eligible for the program, people don’t work. It was such negative incentive effects that led to the welfare reforms in the 1990s, which limited public assistance eligibility to a five-year window and placed a work requirement on those collecting public assistance benefits.

这两种政府方法都试图在市场分配收入之后对其进行再分配。但由于政府制定了管理经济的法律,它可以通过其他方式实现收入均等化。具体来说,它可以通过立法直接影响收入分配的方式。例如,专利、版权和知识产权往往会造成收入不平等。缩短这些权利的授予期限虽然会减少不平等,但也会削弱创新的动力。所有经济学家都同意,必须在公平和创新激励之间找到适当的平衡,但许多经济学家认为,目前的平衡过于偏向那些受政府专利和版权保护的知识产权人。

Both these government approaches attempt to redistribute income after it has been distributed by the market. But because the government sets the laws that govern the economy, it can equalize income in other ways. Specifically, it can directly affect the way in which income is distributed through legislation. For example, patents, copyrights, and intellectual property rights tend to create income inequality. Shortening the length for which these are given out would lead to less inequality, although it would also reduce the incentive to innovate. All economists agree that an appropriate trade-off must be found between equity and incentives to innovate, but many economists believe that the current trade-off leans far too heavily toward those with intellectual property rights protected by government patents and copyrights.

在发展中国家,经济学家埃尔南多·德·索托发现,缺乏可资本化的产权(即可以用作贷款抵押的产权)是导致穷人长期贫困的主要原因,而减少不平等的关键在于政府减少对穷人活动的限制。他还认为,政府应同时将穷人的财产所有权正式化。

In developing countries, economist Hernando de Soto found that the lack of capitalizable property rights (property rights that can be used as collateral for loans) was a major reason why the poor stayed poor, and that a key element to reducing inequality would be for government to reduce the number of restrictions on the poor’s activities. He also argued that governments should simultaneously formalize the titles to property of the poor.

关于美国阶级制度的一些结论

Some Conclusions About the US Class System

尽管《独立宣言》宣称“人人生而平等”,但众所周知,在很多方面,人人并不平等。他们并非生来就拥有平等的学习和成就潜力,也并非生来就生活在同等优越的社会环境中。然而,法律面前人人平等和机会均等是我们珍视的民主理想。多年来,美国一直在努力接近这些理想,自《独立宣言》撰写以来,我们已在实现这些理想方面取得了长足的进步。美国经济近期的结构性变化引发一些人对国家是否提供平等机会的担忧,而这个问题在未来十年很可能成为备受争议的话题。

In spite of the statement in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” everyone knows that in many ways people are not equal. They are not born with equal potentialities for learning and achieving, nor are they born into equally favorable social environments. Nevertheless, equality before the law and equality of opportunity are strongly cherished democratic ideals. Over the years, we have been striving in the United States to come closer to these ideals, and since the Declaration of Independence was written, we have made considerable progress toward them. Recent structural changes in the US economy have led some to be concerned about whether the country is providing equality of opportunity, and this issue will likely be much in debate in the next decade.

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 社会分层有三种类型:等级、种姓和社会阶层。
  • Three types of social stratification are estates, castes, and social classes.
  • 社会流动的存在使得人们能够从一个阶层转移到另一个阶层,使得社会和经济分层更容易被社会接受。
  • The existence of social mobility allows people to move from one class to another and makes the social and economic stratification more acceptable to society.
  • 收入不平等的三个来源是个人服务收入的差异、拥有的财产数量的差异以及政府转移支付的差异。
  • Three sources of income inequ ality are variations in earnings from personal services, differences in the amounts of property owned, and variations in transfer payments from government.
  • 美国的贫困线是维持生活水平所需的收入水平高于贫困线。2020年,四口之家的平均贫困线为26,200美元。
  • The poverty threshold in the United States is the level of income needed to maintain a living standard above the poverty level. In 2020, the poverty level was set at $26,200 for the average family of four.
  • 任何解决经济不平等问题的切实方案都必须考虑到最贫困人口、医疗保健需求、司法、儿童权利以及储蓄和激励需求。
  • Any practical program for meeting the problems of economic inequality must take into account the poorest people, the need for health care, justice, children’s rights, and the need for savings and incentives.
  • 美国的经济阶级体系不够发达,一部分原因是历史因素,一部分原因是市场经济、政府以及美国底层的意识形态将阶级意识视为一种负面特征。
  • The US economic class system is not strongly developed, in part due to historical factors and in part due to the market economy, the government, and the underlying US ideology that sees class consciousness as a negative trait.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 种族隔离制度 (209)
  • apartheid system (209)
  • 资本家(216)
  • capitalists (216)
  • 种姓(208)
  • caste (208)
  • 阶级意识(215)
  • class-conscious (215)
  • 佛法(208)
  • dharma (208)
  • 房地产 (208)
  • estate (208)
  • 层次结构 (207)
  • hierarchy (207)
  • 水平移动性 (215)
  • horizontal mobility (215)
  • 业力(208)
  • karma (208)
  • 公开课系统(212)
  • open class system (212)
  • 外包(219)
  • outsourced (219)
  • 贫困线(218)
  • poverty threshold (218)
  • 无产阶级(216)
  • proletariat (216)
  • 社会阶层(210)
  • social class (210)
  • 社会流动性(213)
  • social mobility (213)
  • 分层(207)
  • stratification (207)
  • 供给侧论点(220)
  • supply-side argument (220)
  • 轮回(208)
  • transmigration (208)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 说出三种主要的社会分层类型并简要描述每种类型的性质。
  2. Name the three principal types of social stratification and briefly describe the nature of each.
  3. 黑人在我们社会中的地位与印度低种姓的地位有何相似之处,又有何不同之处?
  4. How has the position of blacks in our society resembled, and how has it differed from, the position of a low Hindu caste?
  5. 社会可以通过多种方式进行分层。现代工业社会中,分层的主要形式是什么?
  6. Societies can be stratified in a variety of ways. What is the major form of stratification in modern industrial societies?
  7. 为什么卡尔·马克思所预言的阶级冲突从来没有在任何地方发生过?
  8. Why has the kind of class conflict Karl Marx predicted never developed anywhere?
  9. 为什么美国人的阶级意识不强?
  10. Why are Americans not highly class-conscious?
  11. 当我们试图将工业社会的人们划分为明确的社会阶层时,会遇到哪些困难?
  12. What difficulties are encountered when we attempt to divide the people of an industrial society into clear-cut social classes?
  13. 为什么社会阶层是一个家庭问题而不是个人问题?
  14. Why is social class a family matter rather than an individual matter?
  15. 哪些主要因素可能导致阶级流动?
  16. What are some of the principal factors that may contribute to class mobility?
  17. 为什么任何社会的向上社会流动性必然受到限制?
  18. Why is upward social mobility necessarily limited in any society?
  19. 近年来,哪些因素在美国起到了减少阶级差距的作用?您认为有哪些因素产生了相反的效果?
  20. What factors have been operating in the United States in recent years to reduce class distinctions? Can you name any factors that, in your opinion, have had the opposite effect?
  21. 从(a)阶级差别的鲜明程度、(b)阶级意识的程度、(c)社会流动性的角度来描述美国的阶级制度。
  22. Characterize the US class system from the standpoint of (a) the sharpness of class distinctions, (b) the degree of class consciousness, and (c) the amount of social mobility.
  23. 美国社会是否正在变得更加阶层化?请捍卫你的观点。
  24. Is US society becoming more stratified? Defend your point of view.

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 使用www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/h_caste.asp解释吠舍与旃陀罗有何不同。
  2. Using www.hinduwebsite.com/hinduism/h_caste.asp, explain how the Vaisyas differ from the Chandalas.
  3. 查看美国卫生与公众服务部的贫困指南(http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/index.shtml),阿拉斯加州六口之家的最新贫困线是多少?
  4. Looking at the US Department of Health and Human Services’ poverty guidelines, http://aspe.hhs.gov/poverty/index.shtml, what is the most recent poverty threshold for a family of six? In Alaska?
  5. 请访问www.usgs.gov/about/organization/sciencesupport/human-capital/upward-mobility-program-O,这是美国地质调查局“向上流动计划”的网站。这个项目的目的是什么?
  6. Go to www.usgs.gov/about/organization/sciencesupport/human-capital/upward-mobility-program-O, the site of the US Geological Survey, Upward Mobility Program. What is the purpose of this program?
  7. 请访问www.salary.com/并使用薪资向导。您所在地区的中等收入人群的收入范围是多少?
  8. Go to www.salary.com/ and use the Salary Wizard. In your area, what is the income range for the middle
  9. 助教的比例是多少?经济学副教授的比例是多少?
  10. percent of teacher’s aides? What is the range for associate professors of economics?
  11. 根据www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018/cb18-41-population-projections.html,预计美国人口将在哪一年超过 400,000,000?
  12. Using www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018/cb18-41-population-projections.html, in what year is the US population expected to exceed 400,000,000?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 克拉克,格雷戈里,《儿子也崛起:姓氏与社会流动史》尤特·普林斯顿《西方世界经济史》),新泽西州普林斯顿:普林斯顿大学出版社,2015 年。
  • Clark, Gregory, The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility (Ute Princeton Economic History of the Western World), Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
  • Drennan, Matthew P.,《收入不平等:它为何重要以及为何大多数经济学家没有注意到》,康涅狄格州纽黑文:耶鲁大学出版社,2015 年。
  • Drennan, Matthew P., Income Inequality: Why It Matters and Why Most Economists Didn’t Notice, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.
  • 埃伦赖希,芭芭拉,《镍币和角币:在美国(不)生存》纽约:霍尔特,2004 年。
  • Ehrenreich, Barbara, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, New York: Holt, 2004.
  • 福特,理查德·汤普森,《着装规范:时尚法则如何创造历史》纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2021 年。
  • Ford, Richard Thompson, Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2021.
  • 哈福德,蒂姆,《卧底经济学家:揭露富人为何富、穷人为何穷以及你为什么永远买不到像样的二手车》纽约:小布朗,2005 年。
  • Harford, Tim, The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car, New York: Little Brown, 2005.
  • 休斯,克里斯,《公平机会:重新思考不平等和我们的收入方式》,纽约:圣马丁出版社,2018 年。
  • Hughes, Chris, Fair Shot: Rethinking Inequality and How We Earn, New York: St. Martins Press, 2018.
  • 艾森伯格,南希,《白色垃圾:美国 400 年不为人知的阶级历史》纽约:维京出版社,2016 年。
  • Isenberg, Nancy, White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, New York: Viking, 2016.
  • Lindsey, Brink 和Steven Teles 《被俘获的经济:强者如何致富、减缓增长并加剧不平等》纽约:牛津大学出版社,2017 年。
  • Lindsey, Brink, and Steven Teles, The Captured Economy: How the Powerful Enrich Utemselves, Slow Down Growth, and Increase Inequality, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • 查尔斯·默里,《分崩离析:1960-2010 年白人美国的现状》纽约:皇冠论坛出版社,2012 年。
  • Murray, Charles, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, New York: Crowne Forum, 2012.
  • 普特南,罗伯特,《我们的孩子:危机中的美国梦》西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2015 年。
  • Putnam, Robert, Our Kids: the American Dream in Crisis, Simon and Schuster, 2015.
  • Reeves, Richard (编辑),《性格重要吗》华盛顿特区:布鲁金斯学会,2015 年。
  • Reeves, Richard (editor), Does Character Matter? Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2015.
  • 桑德尔,迈克尔,尤特《功绩暴政:公共利益何以成为现实?》纽约:法勒·斯特劳斯和吉鲁出版社,2020年。
  • Sandel, Michael, Ute Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
  • 威尔克森,伊莎贝尔,《种姓:我们不满的起源》纽约:兰登书屋,2020 年。
  • Wilkerson, Isabel, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, New York: Random House, 2020.
  • 威尔逊,威廉·朱利叶斯,《更公正的种族:内城的黑人和穷人》纽约:WW Norton,2009 年。
  • Wilson, William Julius, More Titan Just Race: Being Black and Poor in the Inner City, New York: W. W. Norton, 2009.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第十三阶层分化、少数群体和歧视

chapter 13Stratification, Minorities, and Discrimination

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-13

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-13

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 列举种族偏见的四个原因
  • List four reasons for ethnic and racial prejudice
  • 区分少数群体和主导群体
  • Distinguish between minority and dominant groups
  • 讨论当今美国的种族问题
  • Discuss the race problem in the United States today
  • 解释墨西哥非法移民问题
  • Explain the problem of illegal Mexican immigration
  • 简述宗教少数群体的问题
  • Discuss briefly the problems of religious minorities
  • 简谈性少数群体问题
  • Discuss briefly the problems of sexual minorities
  • 给出支持和反对年龄歧视的论据
  • Give arguments for and against age discrimination

在第十二章中,我们主要从经济和社会角度探讨社会分层。社会也根据种族、民族和文化划分阶层。基于种族、宗教、族裔、年龄、性别、身体残疾或性取向的歧视问题,以及校车接送、工作配额和就业权利等问题——这些问题并非历史遗留问题,而是与我们的日常生活息息相关。

In Chapter 12, social stratification was considered primarily along economic and social lines. Societies are also stratified along racial, ethnic, and cultural lines. Questions of discrimination based on a person’s race, religion, ethnicity, age, gender, physical disabilities, or sexual preferences, and issues of busing, job quotas, and right to jobs—these issues are not of the past, but rather remain relevant to our daily lives.

你们中的许多人可能觉得自己对这些问题非常了解,要么是因为你们亲身经历过,要么是因为这些问题在家里或学校里被广泛讨论过。然而,本章仍然必不可少,它不仅能帮助你们了解这个问题的历史和维度,还能为你们提供一个评判自身观点的标准。平等与歧视问题在今天依然与七十年前社会科学家首次探讨这些问题时一样重要。

Many of you may feel that you are well aware of these issues, either because you have lived them or because they have been extensively discussed at home or in school. This chapter is necessary, nonetheless, both to provide you with a sense of the history and dimension of the issue and to give you a standard by which to judge your own views. The issues of equality and discrimination are as pertinent today as they were seventy years ago, when social scientists first considered these issues.

种族和民族

Race and Ethnicity

尽管所有人类都属于同一物种——智人(Homo sapiens),但他们在体格和文化方面仍存在诸多差异,包括身高、体重、肤色以及头型和脸型的差异。任何群体,如果长期与其他群体隔绝,都会形成不同的体格特征。因此,我们可以通过这些特征来区分不同的群体,并将这些群体称为种族。

Although all human beings belong to the same species, Homo sapiens, they exhibit many physical and cultural variations, including differences in height, weight, skin color, and the shape of the head and face. Any group of people, if isolated from others over a long period of time, will develop differentiating physical characteristics. Thus, it is possible to distinguish groups of people by these characteristics and to call those groups races.

虽然可以通过特征来区分人群,但这也存在问题。自然的分界线很少,而且这些分界线是任意的。此外,任何群体内部都存在一系列等级划分。一种分类系统根据体型差异将大多数人分为三类——高加索人种、蒙古人种和尼格罗人种。这种分类存在双重问题。首先,它反映了基于生物学差异的社会建构。然而,不同人种之间的生物学差异所谓的种族,往往远少于同一“种族”个体之间的生物学差异。我们所说的社会建构究竟是什么意思呢?以发色为例:有红发、棕发和金发;然而,由于我们的社会制度不区分他们,所以发色并不能划分种族。但肤色却能,这并不是因为黑人和白人天生不同,而是因为我们的社会制度将他们区分开来。

While it is possible to distinguish groups of people by characteristics, it is also problematic. There are few natural dividing lines, and those dividing lines are arbitrary. In addition, a range of gradations within any group one makes can be found. One classification system has divided most people into three groups based on physical variations—Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid. The problem with this classification is twofold. First, it reflects social constructions loosely based on biological differences. However, the biological differences between so-called races often are far fewer than the biological differences between individuals of the same “race.” What do we mean by social construction? Consider hair color: There are redheads, brunettes, and blondes; yet because our social system doesn’t distinguish among them, hair color does not delineate race. But skin color does, not because blacks and whites are inherently different, but because our social system differentiates them.

由于种族融合,“种族”作为一种分类体系正在失去意义。 © Goodluz/Shutterstock

Due to mixing of races, “race” as a classification system is losing significance. © Goodluz/Shutterstock

其次,随着时间的推移,移民导致了种族的混合,并且在种族内部可以发现不同的等级。因此,种族作为一种分类系统正在失去意义。美国人口普查局在准备人口普查表时处理了这个分类问题,它列出了大量的种族,如黑人、白人、西班牙裔、西班牙裔、太平洋岛民和许多其他人,包括“其他”,让人们以任何他们喜欢的方式对自己进行分类。拥有美国、泰国和非洲裔美国人血统的高尔夫球星泰格·伍兹试图为他的血统设计一个独特的术语 Cablinasian(高加索人、黑人、印度人亚洲人的组合),这可能标志着一种趋势。随着社会对如何区分群体的看法发生变化,人口普查局也在不断改变其种族分类系统。针对混血人士在被提示选择种族时难以选择单一种族的反馈,人口普查局自2010年起允许人们选择“一个或多个”种族选项。一些人甚至认为,美国政府应该效仿弗朗西斯的做法,不再收集种族信息,因为收集这些信息会导致政府在制定政策时缺乏对种族的中立性,而这远非许多人所认为的那样。政府为什么要关心有多少人认为自己是黑人或西班牙裔?我们都是美国人。

Second, over time, migration has led to a mixing of the races, and ranges of gradation within races can be found. Thus race as a classification system is losing significance. The US Bureau of the Census dealt with this classification problem when it prepared its census forms by listing a large number of ethnicities, such as black, white, Hispanic, of Hispanic origin, Pacific Islander, and many others, including “Other,” leaving people to classify themselves in any way they pleased. Golf star Tiger Woods, who is of U.S., Thai and African American descent, tried to devise a unique term for his heritage, Cablinasian (a combination of the words Caucasian, black, Indian, and Asian), and this may mark a trend. The Census Bureau is continually changing its race classification system, as society’s view of how we should distinguish groups changes. In response to feedback from people of mixed race who found it difficult to select only one race when prompted, the Census Bureau has allowed people to select “one or more” options for their race since 2010. Some even argue that the US government should follow Frances example, and not collect information on race because having that information leads the government to be less race-neutral in its policies than many believe it should be. Why should the government care how many people consider themselves black or Hispanic? We are all Americans.

与种族密切相关的一个概念是民族性,这是一种更合理的人群分类方法。区分种族和民族性至关重要。这样做的原因如下:种族是一种生物学分类系统,而民族性是一种文化分类。民族群体是指基于共同祖先和文化遗产而相互认同的群体。

A concept closely related to race is ethnicity, which is a more defensible way of classifying groups of people. It is important to distinguish between race and ethnicity. The reason for doing so is the following: Whereas race is a biological classification system, ethnicity is a cultural classification. An ethnic group is a group of people who identify with each other on the basis of common ancestry and cultural heritage.

在流行用法中,族群差异常常与种族差异相混淆。不同群体在国籍、语言和宗教等方面的族群差异很重要,但它们并不构成种族差异。例如,说法国族群或德国族群是不正确的。法国和德国是相邻的国家,生活在边界一侧的人与生活在边界另一侧的人在体貌上差别不大。将犹太人称为一个种族也是一种误导。他们没有任何可以可靠地与我们人口中的非犹太人区分开来的体貌特征。最主要的是,将他们凝聚在一起的是宗教、历史和社会传统——也就是族群。

In popular usage, ethnic differences often are confused with racial differences. Ethnic differences between groups in matters such as nationality, language, and religion are important, but they do not constitute differences in race. It would be incorrect, for example, to speak of the French race or the German race. France and Germany are adjacent countries, and the people who live on one side of the border are physically little different from those who live on the other side. It is also misleading to call Jewish people a race. They have no physical characteristics by which they can be dependably distinguished from non-Jews in our population. Primarily, what holds them together as a group is religion, history, and social tradition—that is, ethnicities.

种族和民族的差异分为不同的类别,并且在很大程度上彼此独立。种族决定文化这一常见假设几乎没有科学或事实依据。在夏威夷等不同种族群体长期密切共处的地方,他们很可能拥有大致相同的文化;另一方面,生活在世界不同地区的同一种族成员往往表现出截然不同的文化模式。要理解最后这一说法的真实性,我们只需比较一下美国黑人和生活在非洲刚果盆地的黑人的文化即可。

Racial and ethnic differences fall into distinct categories and are largely independent of each other. The frequently made assumption that race determines culture has little scientific or factual basis. Where different racial groups have lived in close association for some time, as in Hawaii, they are likely to have much the same culture; on the other hand, members of the same race living in different parts of the world often exhibit cultural patterns that are radically different. To see the truth of this last statement, we need only compare the culture of black Americans with that of blacks living in the Congo basin of Africa.

民族和种族优越性问题

Questions of Ethnic and Racial Superiority

有些人认为,某个种族或族群天生在智力和创造力方面优于其他种族或族群,这种优越性很大程度上解释了某些群体能够达到的高度文明程度。这种观点表面上看似合理,因为过去几百年来,许多有记录的科学和社会进步(至少是欧洲裔白人所熟悉的那些)都是由欧洲裔族群创造的。

Some people believe that one race or one ethnic group is innately superior to others in intelligence and creativity, and that this superiority largely explains the high degree of civilization certain groups have been able to achieve. This may seem superficially plausible because many of the recorded scientific and social advances (or at least the ones familiar to whites of European descent) in the last several hundred years have been made by the European descended ethnic groups.

这种观点极其短视。几个世纪以来,引领文明进步的特定群体一直在变化。首先是苏美尔人和埃及人;后来是印度人和中国人、犹太人、腓尼基人和波斯人;再后来是希腊人和罗马人;然后,阿拉伯人一度崛起;最后是北欧和西欧的民族。但我们只需追溯到2000年前或更短的时间,就能发现罗马作家认为当时原始的英国人和德国人不仅粗鲁、不文明,而且愚蠢。在世界其他地区,组织良好的社会也发展起来,但它们要么解体,要么被入侵者、疾病或自然灾害摧毁。这些文明包括美洲的玛雅文明和印加文明,以及撒哈拉以南黑非洲的各个王国。

Such a view would be extremely shortsighted. Over the centuries, the particular groups who have taken the lead in the advances of civilization have changed. First, it was the Sumerians and the Egyptians; later, the people of India and China, the Jews, the Phoenicians, and the Persians; still later, the Greeks and Romans; then, for a while, the Arabs; and finally, the peoples of northern and western Europe. But we need go back only 2,000 years or less to find Roman writers who looked on the then primitive Britons and Germans as not only crude and uncivilized but also stupid. In other parts of the world, well-organized societies developed but they either disintegrated or were destroyed by invaders, disease, or natural disasters. These include the Maya and Inca civilizations in the Americas and various kingdoms in black Africa south of the Sahara.

没有任何令人信服的科学证据或任何其他类型的证据能够支持某些种族在生物学上比其他种族拥有更强的发展能力这一论点。哪个社会引领世界文明发展,取决于多种因素,例如适宜的气候和土壤、通过汇聚不同文化背景人群而引发变革的迁徙,以及偶然的发现和发明。这些进步往往会导致进一步的发展,技术技能的逐步积累,粮食产量的增加,人口的缓慢增长,以及城镇的发展。每个群体都有其聪明和愚钝的个体,有高智商的人,也有愚笨的人。

There is no convincing scientific, or any other type of, evidence to support the contention that some races biologically inherit a greater capacity for development than others. Which society leads the world development of civilization is the result of a combination of other factors such as favorable climate and soil, migrations that stimulated change by bringing together peoples with different cultural backgrounds, and fortuitous discoveries and inventions. Such advances tend to lead to further advances, a gradual accumulation of technical skills, an increase in food output, a slow growth of population, and the development of towns and cities. Every group of people has its bright and dull individuals, its great intellects and its idiots.

平均而言,不同种族之间可能存在一些遗传的精神和心理差异,就像存在身体差异一样。理查德·赫恩斯坦和查尔斯·默里在一本颇具争议的著作《钟形曲线:美国人生活中的智力和阶级结构》中收集的统计数据表明,在美国,亚裔美国人的智商测试平均得分比白人高几分,非裔美国人的智商测试平均得分比白人低 15 分左右。这些统计数据以及智商测试在衡量智力方面的实用性受到了不同程度的质疑。但即使统计数据正确,智商测试确实能衡量智力,我们仍不清楚这种分数差异是种族固有的还是社会决定的。此外,平均值并不能说明个人的情况,因此大多数社会科学家表示,无法从此类统计数据中得出任何政策推论。

It is possible that, on average, there are some inherited mental and psychological differences between ethnic groups, just as there are physical differences. Statistics collected by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray in a controversial book entitled The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life suggest that in the United States, on average, Americans of Asian descent score a few points higher than whites on IQ tests, and black Americans score about 15 points lower than whites. These statistics, and the usefulness of IQ tests in measuring mental abilities, have been challenged on a variety of levels. But even if the statistics are correct and IQ tests actually measure mental ability, it is not clear whether the difference in scores is inherent in ethnic groups or is socially determined. Moreover, averages say nothing about individuals, so most social scientists say that no policy inference can be drawn from such statistics.

即使存在一些先天性的心理和精神差异,也并不一定意味着优劣,就像肤色、发质或头型的差异一样。无论如何,与每个种族个体之间存在的巨大差异相比,这些差异微不足道。

Even if some inborn mental and psychological differences exist, they do not necessarily mean superiority or inferiority any more than do differences in skin color, hair texture, or head shape. In any case, such differences are minor compared with the great differences that exist among individuals in every ethnic group.

一些社会科学家认为,种族概念受社会因素影响过大,因此这类讨论不属于社会科学范畴。问题在于,关于种族的讨论往往带有情绪色彩,而情绪与好的科学格格不入。我们同意这种观点。不讨论种族问题的理由包括:

Some social scientists argue that the concept of race is so socially determined that such discussions do not belong in social science. The problem is that discussions of race are often emotionally charged and emotion is anathema to good science. We agree. The reasons not to discuss race include:

  • “种族”一词是一种社会构造,而非重要的物理构造。
  • The term race is a social, not an important physical, construction.
  • 种族内部的生物学差异往往远远超过种族之间的生物学差异。
  • Biological differences within a race tend to far exceed biological differences among races.
  • 种族概念长期以来一直被不恰当地使用。
  • The race concept has a history of being inappropriately used.

这些原因导致大多数社会科学家关注其他的人群分类方法。我们在此讨论种族问题,并非因为我们认为种族之间有任何有意义的生物学区别,而仅仅是因为种族问题在我们的社会中被广泛讨论,并且我们认为有必要解决社会关注的问题。无论种族概念在民主国家是否有意义,重要的是将所有人视为人,根据个人优点评判他人,并为人们提供一切机会来发展和运用他们所拥有的一切能力。

These reasons lead most social scientists to focus on other ways of classifying people. We discuss the issue of race here not because we believe races are distinguishable in any meaningful biological way, but simply because race is much discussed in our society and we believe it is necessary to address issues of societal concern. Regardless of whether the concept of race is a meaningful concept in a democracy, the important thing is to treat all people as human beings, to judge people on their individual merits, and to provide every opportunity for people to develop and use whatever capabilities they possess.

种族偏见和歧视

Ethnic and Racial Prejudice and Discrimination

在不同社会和社会环境下,族群关系差异巨大。在某些情况下,不同族群成员之间摩擦相对较少。偏见——一种事先形成的、或未经了解或审查事实而形成的负面判断或意见——确实存在,但族群壁垒不足以阻止大量的社会接触和频繁的通婚。如今夏威夷的情况似乎就是这样,那里的主要族群是高加索人和亚裔/太平洋岛民。尽管各族群在居住、经济和教育方面尚未丧失各自的身份认同,但他们几乎已经融合。但在世界上的其他地方,偏见和

Ethnic relations vary greatly in different societies and in different social situations. In some cases, relatively little friction exists among members of different ethnic groups. Prejudice—an adverse judgment or opinion formed beforehand or without knowledge or examination of the facts—exists, but ethnic barriers are not sufficient to prevent considerable social contact and frequent intermarriages. This seems to be the situation today in Hawaii, where the principal ethnic classifications are Caucasian and Asian/Pacific Islander. Though the various ethnic groups have not yet lost their sense of identity, residentially, economically, and educationally, they are nearly integrated. But there are other places in the world where prejudice and

歧视——基于偏见的行为、举止或待遇——十分严重,种族隔离是公认的模式。

discrimination—actions, behavior, or treatment based on prejudice—are intense and where racial segregation is the accepted pattern.

这些巨大的差异该如何解释?许多人认为偏见是不可避免的,是一种遗传的厌恶情绪。但人类态度会遗传的观点早已被心理学家否定,种族偏见也无法用任何这种简单的解释来解释。此外,态度和偏见并不一定会导致歧视行为。

What is the explanation for these great variations? Many people feel that prejudice is inevitable, that it is an inherited aversion. But the belief that human beings inherit attitudes has long been discredited by psychologists, and racial prejudice cannot be accounted for by any such simple explanation. Moreover, attitude and prejudice need not necessarily lead to discriminatory actions.

学者们提出了各种造成种族和民族偏见的原因。其中最突出的是以下四个:

Writers have suggested various reasons for ethnic and racial prejudice. Prominent among these are the following four:

  1. 传统的影响
  2. Influence of tradition
  3. 个人对属于特定、可识别群体的心理需求
  4. Psychological need of individuals to belong to a particular, identifiable group
  5. 通过培养优越感来建立自我
  6. Building up of the ego by cultivating a feeling of superiority
  7. 偏见作为经济和政治武器的效用。
  8. Usefulness of prejudice as an economic and political weapon.

每一个方面都可以进行大量的扩展,但我们将把这留给社会学课程来探讨。在这里,我们只是想让你思考一下你自己的态度,问问自己,它们是否反映了偏见,如果有的话,思考偏见背后的原因。之后,你再进一步问问自己,你的偏见是否体现在歧视行为中。如果体现了歧视行为,评估一下你是否认为这些行为是合理的。

Each of these could be expanded enormously, but we will leave that to sociology courses. Here, we simply want you to consider your own attitudes, to ask yourself whether they reflect prejudice, and, if so, to consider the reasons behind that prejudice. After you’ve done that, take the next step and ask yourself whether your prejudices show up in discriminatory actions. If they do, evaluate whether you find those actions justified.

2015年7月10日,悬挂了54年的邦联旗帜从南卡罗来纳州哥伦比亚市的国会大厦上被移除。 © John Bazemore/AP

On July 10, 2015, the confederate flag was removed from the cap itol grounds in Columbia, South Carolina, after fifty-four years. © John Bazemore/AP

大熔炉

The Melting Pot

由于人口结构复杂,且移民群体最终容易被同化,美国常被称为“大熔炉”。虽然白人殖民者主要为英国人,但也有其他国籍的移民。19世纪,美国接收了3000万移民,20世纪初又有数百万移民抵达。少数移民来自世界各地,但绝大多数是来自欧洲的白种人。过去30年,来自亚洲和拉丁美洲国家的移民数量一直居高不下,并且很可能在21世纪初继续保持高位。

Because of its heterogeneous population and the tendency of immigrant groups ultimately to become assimilated, the United States often has been called a melting pot. Although the white colonial population was predominantly British, other nationalities were also represented. During the nineteenth century, this country received thirty million immigrants, and in the early twentieth century millions more arrived. A few came from almost every section of the world, but the great majority were Caucasians from Europe. In the last thirty years, immigration from Asian and Latin American countries to the United States has been high and will likely continue to be high through the early 2000s.

那些基本生活方式与早期英国定居者没有太大差异的群体在相对较短的时间内被同化;其他群体的同化则要慢得多。但从一开始就存在着一些非高加索群体,他们的同化似乎是不可能的,因为他们不仅在文化上,而且在种族上都与大多数美国人不同。今天仍然有一些未被同化的群体。其中最著名的是黑人,但也包括西班牙裔,他们大多是高加索人,但最近才来到这个国家;亚洲人,他们的体貌特征使他们与白种人有区别,有时他们会发现自己在经济和教育方面受到歧视;以及中东血统的人,在美国努力平衡反恐与个人自由的同时,他们与伊斯兰教的联系使他们遭受歧视。

Groups whose basic patterns of life were not too unlike those of the early British settlers became assimilated in a relatively short time; others were assimilated more slowly. But from the beginning there were non-Caucasian groups whose assimilation seemed impossible because they differed not only culturally but also racially from the majority of the American people. Today there are still unassimilated groups. The best known of these are blacks, but they also include Hispanics, who are largely Caucasian but who have come to this country rather recently; Asians, whose physical characteristics set them apart from white Caucasians and who sometimes find themselves the subjects of economic and educational discrimination; and individuals of Middle Eastern descent, whose connections with Islam have subjected them to discrimination as the United States struggles to balance its fight against terrorism with individual liberties.

少数民族

Minorities

如果各个群体之间虽然存在差异但本质上是平等的,那么偏见和歧视或许就不会成为社会科学家关注的核心问题。然而,正如社会和经济分层的情况一样,种族和族裔群体并非受到平等对待:少数群体是指被单独挑出遭受不平等负面待遇,并将自己视为集体歧视对象的群体,而主导群体是指被单独挑出遭受正面待遇的群体。之所以使用“主导群体”而非“多数群体”一词,是因为主导群体可能属于少数群体,就像南非的欧洲裔白人一样。

If various groups were different but essentially equal, prejudice and discrimination probably would not be a central concern of social scientists. But as was the case with social and economic stratification, racial and ethnic groups are not viewed equally: Minority groups are groups of people singled out for unequal negative treatment and who regard themselves as objects of collective discrimination, and dominant groups are groups of people singled out for positive treatment. The term dominant group is used rather than majority because the dominant group maybe a minority, as was the case with white people of European descent in South Africa.

在本章的其余部分,我们将向您介绍美国的重要少数群体。

In the remainder of this chapter, we introduce you to the important minority groups in the United States.

美洲原住民

Native Americans

美洲原住民是如今美国境内的第一批定居者。虽然具体日期尚不确定,但大多数人类学家认为他们大约在3万年前从亚洲迁徙而来。之后

The Native Americans were the first settlers of what is now the United States. Although the date is uncertain, most anthropologists believe they came from Asia about 30,000 years ago. After

欧洲人开始在北美殖民,肆虐北美大陆的致命疾病和殖民扩张使得欧洲人的数量迅速超过并最终征服了美洲原住民。如今,他们是一个相对较小的少数群体,长期以来,他们是所有少数群体中最孤立的,或许也是教育资源最匮乏的群体。近年来,美洲原住民主动采取行动,努力加强与美国主流文化的联系,改善教育和就业机会,并在某些情况下,试图归还18世纪和19世纪初美洲原住民通过法庭诉讼程序所占领的土地。

Europeans began to colonize North America, a combination of deadly diseases that ravaged the continent and colonial expansion ensured that Europeans soon outnumbered and eventually conquered the Native American population. Today, they are a relatively small minority, and for a long time they were the most isolated of all minority groups and perhaps the most deprived in education. Recently, Native Americans have taken the initiative in efforts to increase ties with the dominant US culture, to improve their educational and employment opportunities, and in some cases to restore lands taken in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by procedures that Native Americans have attacked in the courts.

在过去的一个世纪里,占主导地位的白人群体对美国原住民的政策经历了一系列变化:(1)强制隔离和种族隔离;(2)强制融入美国社会,这给美国原住民在文化、经济和身体方面造成了近乎灾难性的后果;(3)更为渐进的同化政策。目前政府对他们的政策基于1934年的《印第安人重组法案》,该法案旨在鼓励美洲原住民部落复兴其传统,并自主管理政治和经济事务。尽管许多美洲原住民选择居住在被指定为美洲原住民家园的土地上,但他们可以自由地居住在自己喜欢的地方;他们是美国公民,拥有投票权;他们缴纳一定的税款,并享受社会保障福利;他们可以拥有私有财产;并且可以自由地在任何他们希望的地方就业。然而,在被指定为美洲原住民土地的地区之外,他们有时会遭遇偏见,难以适应美国主流文化。此外,他们中的一些人还因健康状况不佳、缺乏教育和技能以及语言障碍而处于不利地位。每个部落都有自己的语言或方言,对于非该部落成员的人来说,学习这些语言通常非常困难。根据联邦印第安事务局的数据,在如今的美国,美洲原住民最初使用大约300种不同的语言,目前可能仍有多达200种语言流传至今。此外,如果部落与外界隔绝,同化过程将极其缓慢。

The policies of the dominant white population toward Native Americans have undergone changes in the past century from (1) enforced isolation and segregation, to (2) forced integration into US society, with almost disastrous results for Native Americans culturally, economically, and physically, to (3) a policy of much more gradual assimilation. The present government policy toward them is based on the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which was designed to encourage Native American tribes to revive their traditions and to manage their own political and economic affairs. Although many Native Americans choose to live on land designated as Native American homeland, they can live where they like; they are US citizens and can vote; they pay certain taxes, and they receive Social Security benefits; they may own private property; and they are free to seek employment anywhere they wish. But they sometimes encounter prejudice and have difficulty in adjusting to the dominant US culture outside of areas designated as Native American lands. Also, some of them are disadvantaged by poor health, a lack of education and skills, and a language barrier. Each of the tribes has its own language or dialect, which usually is very difficult for a person who is not a member of the particular tribe to learn. According to the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, there were originally about 300 different languages spoken by Native Americans in what is now the United States, and possibly as many as 200 still survive. If in addition the tribe is isolated, the process of assimilation is extremely slow.

美国黑人1自认为是黑人的人数约为四千七百万,约占美国总人口的13.5%。美国黑人大多是十七、十八世纪和十九世纪初被贩卖到美国的奴隶的后裔。据估计,从1600年到十九世纪后期,至少有一千四百万到一千五百万黑奴登陆美洲(包括南北美洲,其中大多数被送往加勒比海的甘蔗种植园;只有5%的奴隶乘船前往美国)。

Blacks Americans1 The number of people who classify themselves as Black is approximately forty-seven million people, or about 13.5 percent of the US population. Black Americans are for the most part descendants of slaves brought over to the United States in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries. According to one estimate, at least fourteen to fifteen million black slaves landed in the Americas (North and South, with a majority sent to sugar plantations in the Caribbean; only 5 percent of slaves were on ships bound for the United States) from 1600 to the latter part of the nineteenth century.

美国黑人的非洲起源十七、十八世纪奴隶的主要来源地是非洲的几内亚湾。该地区人口密度高于非洲大部分地区,而且由于商人已经与外界建立了象牙和黄金贸易,因此很容易提供奴隶。几内亚人的贸易路线证明了他们相对先进的文化。尽管他们没有文字,但该地区的居民在农业、金属加工、陶器和雕塑方面在黑非洲处于领先地位。

The African Origins of US Blacks The main source of slaves in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was the Gulf of Guinea in Africa. This area was more densely populated than most of Africa, and as merchants had already established trade with the outside world in ivory and gold, it was easy to provide slaves as well. The trade routes of the Guinea people were evidence of a relatively advanced culture. Although they were a nonliterate people, the inhabitants of this area were among the leaders of black Africa in agriculture, metalwork, pottery, and sculpture.

奴隶贸易历史悠久。早在900年代初,穆斯林柏柏尔人和阿拉伯人就从非洲出口黑奴。15世纪,西班牙和葡萄牙从非洲进口奴隶,这些奴隶是从其他非洲人手中购买的。第一艘奴隶船直到1619年才抵达如今的美国领土,将黑人运往弗吉尼亚,在英国殖民地当劳工。种植园主需要大量可控的工人,而黑奴正是满足这一需求的答案。

Slave trading has a long history. Muslim Berbers and Arabs exported black slaves from Africa as far back as the early 900s. In the fifteenth century, Spain and Portugal imported slaves from Africa, whom they bought from other Africans. The first ship of slaves did not arrive in the territory of what is now the United States until 1619, carrying blacks to Virginia for labor in the British colonies. Plantation owners needed a large force of controllable workers, and black slaves were the answer to this need.

尽管1808年美国禁止进口奴隶,但对劳动力的需求并未减弱,成千上万的奴隶不顾法律的约束被偷运入境。这种做法一直持续到内战爆发,直到1863年亚伯拉罕·林肯签署了《解放奴隶宣言》。废奴主义者在北方是一股强大的力量,但除了人道主义考虑之外,政治领导人还将解放奴隶视为在战争期间进一步削弱南方的一种手段。

Although importation of slaves to the United States became illegal in 1808, the need for a workforce did not subside, and thousands of slaves were smuggled in despite the laws. These practices continued until the Civil War, when, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Abolitionists were a strong force in the North, but aside from humanitarian concerns, political leaders also saw emancipation as a way to further cripple the South during the war.

《解放奴隶宣言》和美国宪法第十三修正案改变了奴隶的法律地位,但并未改变他们的社会地位。所谓的“吉姆·克劳法” 2进一步强化了对黑人的系统性法律隔离,黑人的投票权在南方各州被有效剥夺。白人至上主义的宣传愈演愈烈,并经常伴有暴力事件。

The Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution changed the legal status of slaves but not their social status. The systematic legal segregation of blacks was promoted by what were called Jim Crow laws,2 and the voting rights of blacks were effectively blocked in the southern states. White supremacy propaganda became intense and was often accompanied by violence.

持续存在的对黑人的歧视当今美国黑人面临的问题与美国其他少数族裔的问题截然不同。首先,美国黑人远离他们的非洲故土,以至于他们的许多文化遗产如今已难以辨认。尽管他们的文化模式可能与其他美国人略有不同,但他们本质上是美国人,这体现在他们的语言、习俗、教育和宗教信仰上。然而,黑人少数族裔的地位仍然……由于黑人是美国唯一一个祖先曾长期被白人奴役的少数族裔,这一事实对他们产生了不利影响。其他少数族裔都没有经历过奴隶制带来的社会和心理剧变,以及随之而来的突然解放,以及随后长期的歧视和隔离,其中一些是法律强制执行的。此外,与其他少数族裔相比,黑人在肤色、头发和外貌方面与白人的差异更大,这加剧了白人和黑人之间有时存在的强烈个人偏见。

Continuing Discrimination Against Blacks The problems of blacks in the United States today differ from those of any other minority group in this country. To begin with, blacks in the United States are so far removed from their African homeland that much of their cultural heritage is difficult to identify today. Though their cultural patterns may differ somewhat from those of other Americans, they essentially are American by culture, as reflected in their language, customs, education, and religion. But the position of the black minority still is influenced unfavorably by the fact that it is the only minority in this country whose ancestors once served a long period of slavery to whites. No other minority groups have experienced the social and psychological upheavals caused by slavery, followed by sudden emancipation and then by a long period of discrimination and segregation, some of it enforced by law. In addition, blacks tend to differ from whites in skin color, hair, and features more than other minority ethnic groups, and this has contributed to the strong personal prejudice that sometimes exists between whites and blacks.

插图描绘了奴隶船上狭窄的舱室。 © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

An illustration shows the cramped quarters on a slave ship. © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy

尽管近几十年来黑人的地位在许多方面都有所提高,但他们仍然遭受偏见和歧视,并且面临过去歧视遗留下来的不利条件。

Although the status of blacks has advanced in many ways in recent decades, they still suffer from prejudice and discrimination and from disadvantages that are the legacy of past discrimination.

法律歧视和种族隔离我们已经简要描述了南方法律种族隔离的兴起。长期以来,该法律所依据的州法律是否符合宪法一直存在争议,因为 1868 年通过的美国宪法第十四修正案规定,任何州不得否认任何人在法律下享有的平等保护。问题在于种族隔离是否构成对平等保护的否定。那些试图在法庭上挑战这些法律的人一直没有取得重大成功,直到 1954 年美国最高法院在“布朗诉教育委员会”案中宣布公立学校的种族隔离为非法。

Legal Discrimination and Segregation We have already described briefly the rise of legal segregation in the South. The constitutionality of the state laws on which it was based was long a matter of dispute because the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, adopted in 1868, provides that no state may deny any person equal protection under the laws. The question was whether segregation constituted denial of equal protection. Those who attempted to challenge these laws in the courts had no important success until 1954, when the US Supreme Court, in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, outlawed segregation in public schools.

马丁·路德·金出席1963年华盛顿民权游行。 © 美国政府

Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 civil rights march in Washington. © US Govt.

布朗案的判决推翻了最高法院1896年在普莱西诉弗格森案中做出的一项裁决。当时,最高法院批准州立法对黑人和白人实行种族隔离。普莱西案的判决基于所谓的“隔离但平等”原则,即为黑人提供单独的教育、娱乐和其他公共设施,并不否认这些设施在法律下享有与白人同等的保护。实践证明,这种平等不过是神话。

The Brown decision reversed a decision made by the Court in 1896, when, in the case of Plessy v. Ferguson, it had issued a decision approving segregation of blacks and whites by state legislation. The decision in Plessy was based on the so-called separate-but-equal doctrine, that is, the theory that providing separate educational, recreational, and other public facilities for blacks was not denying equal protection under the laws if these facilities were equal to those for whites. In practice, this equality proved to be a myth.

布朗案裁定学校种族隔离为挑战其他种族隔离法律开辟了道路,大约十年后,人们清楚地认识到这些法律均违宪。然而,种族隔离制度的解构,尤其是在学校种族隔离制度中的解构,已被证明是一个缓慢而艰难的过程。一些争议源于以下问题:法院判决和国会通过的民权法案是否仅仅废除了要求或鼓励就读实行种族隔离的学校的法律和公共政策,还是也赋予社区和学校董事会采取积极措施消除事实上的种族隔离的义务——即由于社会和文化原因而非法律原因而发生的种族隔离。法律上的种族隔离是基于实际种族隔离法律的种族隔离。

The Brown decision outlawing school segregation opened the way for challenging other segregation laws, and within a decade or so it became clear that they were all unconstitutional. However, the deconstruction of systems of segregation, especially in the case of schools, has proved to be a slow and difficult process. Some confusion has resulted from disagreement about whether court decisions and civil rights acts passed by Congress merely annul laws and public policies that require or encourage attendance at segregated schools, or whether they also place an obligation on communities and school boards to take positive measures to eliminate de facto nsegregation—segregation that occurs because of social and cultural, not legal, reasons. De jure segregation is segregation based on actual segregation laws.

自1954年以来,美国通过了多项重要的民权立法。例如,20世纪50年代和60年代的《民权法案》保障了黑人的投票权,并禁止在公共场所、联邦政府援助项目和住房方面基于“种族”(当时的术语)、性别或国籍进行歧视。

Since 1954, many major pieces of civil rights legislation have been passed. For example, the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950s and 1960s enforced the voting rights of blacks and prohibited discrimination on the basis of “race” (as was then the terminology), sex, or national origin in public accommodations, federally assisted programs, and housing.

黑人沮丧的原因:尽管出台了诸多立法,但许多黑人的生活却几乎没有改善,这种沮丧情绪有时甚至引发骚乱和内乱。他们的沮丧源于社会和经济状况。尽管黑人的经济状况平均而言已有显著改善,但远未赶上白人。2020年,黑人的收入中位数还不到白人的60%。

Causes of Blacks' Frustration Despite all of this legislation, for many blacks there has been little progress, and the frustration level has at times led to riots and civil disturbances. Their frustration is grounded in both social and economic conditions. Though the economic condition of blacks has, on the average, improved greatly, it has by no means caught up with that of whites. In 2020, blacks earned a median income that was less than 60 percent of that earned by whites.

造成低收入的原因错综复杂,多种多样,包括歧视、家庭结构、年龄结构、职业和教育。黑人在低技能劳动力中所占比例高于总人口比例,且在管理职位中所占比例较低。此外,他们的失业率也较高。表13.1a显示,黑人的失业率一直高于其他主要群体(白人和西班牙裔)。年轻黑人男性的失业率尤其高,如表13.1b所示。

The reasons for this lower income are complicated and varied. They include discrimination, family structure, age structure, occupation, and education. Blacks make up a higher proportion of the labor force for low-skilled jobs than is proportional to the general population, and a lower percentage of managerial jobs. Additionally, their unemployment rates are higher. Table 13.1a shows that black unemployment rates have consistently remained at higher levels than those of the other major groups (whites and Hispanics). The unemployment rate is especially high among young black males, as can be seen in Table 13.1b.

这个问题很大程度上可以归咎于过去和现在对黑人的歧视。歧视剥夺了一些黑人获得必要教育和培训的动力,而这些教育和培训不仅需要工作意愿,还需要超乎寻常的技能、培训和教育背景。他们认为,即使自己有资格胜任,也不会得到这样的工作。因此,对他们来说,学习市场所需的技能毫无意义。更糟糕的是,很大一部分黑人居住在犯罪猖獗、住房条件低下的社区。

Much of the problem can be attributed to past and present discrimination against blacks. Discrimination has robbed some blacks of the incentive to acquire the necessary education and training to fill jobs that require not only willingness to work but also more than average skill, training, and education. They believe they will not be given such jobs even if they are qualified to fill them. As a result, to them it makes no sense to acquire marketable skills. To make matters worse, a large proportion of blacks live in neighborhoods where crime is rampant and housing substandard.

讨论当今美国黑人所面临的经济和社会劣势,不能不谈大规模监禁这一话题。三分之一的黑人男性一生中都会入狱,这一事实加剧了该群体原本就存在的诸多问题,例如失业和家庭不稳定。这一制度以及其他歧视制度阻碍了黑人群体的发展。

The economic and social disadvantages that black people face in the United States today cannot be discussed without touching on the topic of mass incarceration. The fact that one in three black men will go to prison in their lifetime compounds many of the problems already affecting that community, such as unemployment and family instability. This system, and other systems of discrimination, have hampered the development of the black community.

迈向平等的进步尽管存在这些问题,黑人的平均经济状况还是有所改善。许多黑人已经进入了职业水平和技术性工作。黑人职业发展的主要功劳或许应该归功于他们当中那些有志于并愿意接受教育和培训的人。但他们

Progress Toward Equality Notwithstanding these problems, the average economic condition of blacks has improved. Many blacks have moved into career-level and skilled jobs. The major credit for the job advancement of blacks should probably go to those individuals among them who have had the ambition and the willingness to acquire education and training. But they

表 13.1a 1975 年至 2020 年各种族失业情况
所有族裔(%) 白色的 (%) 黑色的 (%) 西班牙裔(%)
1975 8.5 7.8 14.8 无法使用
1980 7.1 6.3 14.3 10.1
1985 7.3 6.5 14.0 10.6
1990 5.5 5.1 12.0 8.7
1995 5.6 4.9 10.4 9.3
2000 4.0 3.9 8.5 7.0
2005 5.1 4.4 10.0 7.1
2010 9.6 8.7 16.0 12.5
2015 5.2 4.5 9.5 6.5
2020 6.5 5.8 9.9 8.7
资料来源:美国劳工统计局,就业和收入。
表 13.1b 2020 年(第三季度)按年龄组划分的男性失业率
年龄组 白色的 (%) 黑色的 (%)
16-19 11.4 18.1
20-24 10.3 16.0
25-34 6.8 11.1
35-44 5.5 8.2
45-54 5.3 7.1
55-64 5.7 7.4
65岁及以上 5.5 9.4
资料来源:美国劳工统计局,CPS。

黑人群体得到了有组织的帮助,他们获得了比过去更多的机会。这些努力由政府机构、高校、企业以及其他各种私人团体共同开展,其中一些团体由黑人自发组织。这些努力的范围广泛,从试图培训失业者从事特定工作,到为符合条件的黑人提供深造奖学金或助学金。

have been helped by organized efforts to give blacks far greater opportunities than were available to them in the past. These efforts are made by government agencies, colleges and universities, corporations, and various other private groups, including some organized by blacks themselves. They range from trying to train the hard-core unemployed for specific jobs to providing qualified blacks with scholarships or fellowships for advanced study.

过去,限制黑人经济发展的一个重要因素是工会的歧视,许多工会拒绝接纳黑人成为会员。一些工会仍然强烈抵制接纳黑人,但歧视黑人的工会数量正在减少。大城市的建筑工会在接纳黑人学徒方面尤其缓慢,除了象征性地接收一些,但在压力之下,他们正在采取更为宽松的政策。

In the past, a significant factor in restricting the economic progress of blacks has been discrimination by labor unions, many of which refused to accept them as members. Some still strongly resist admission of blacks, but the number of unions that discriminate is declining. Construction trade unions in large cities have been especially slow in accepting black apprentices except in token numbers, but under pressure they are adopting more liberal policies.

过去,黑人商人或专业人士的服务市场通常仅限于其所在社区。如今,这种情况正在改变。许多公司正在积极寻找合格的黑人来填补专业或行政职位。这并非易事,因为接受过良好大学教育的黑人仍然相对较少,拥有研究生院或专业学校学位的黑人就更少了,而且招聘竞争有时非常激烈。但情况正在取得进展,过去几十年来,黑人进入大学和专业学校的人数显著增加。

In the past, black business people or professionals were generally limited to their own community as the market for their services. Today the situation is changing. Many corporations are actively seeking qualified blacks to fill professional or administrative positions. This is not always easy, because there are still relatively few blacks with good college training and even fewer with degrees from graduate or professional schools, and the competition to hire them is sometimes intense. But progress is being made, and black enrollment in college and professional schools has risen significantly in the past decades.

从1960年到2020年,完成四年大学教育的黑人比例从约3.5%上升到约26%;完成高中教育的黑人比例从23%上升到约90%。此外,随着黑人政治权力的增长和平等诉求的不断高涨,医院、学校以及州和地方政府机构等公共机构向黑人开放了越来越多的专业和行政职位。

From 1960 to 2020, the percentage of blacks completing four years of college rose from about 3.5 percent to about 26 percent; the percentage of blacks completing high school rose from 23 percent to about 90 percent. In addition, as black political power has grown and the demands for equality have mounted, more and more professional and administrative jobs have been opened to blacks in public institutions such as hospitals, schools, and state and local government agencies.

造成这种增长的部分原因是平权行动计划,这些计划旨在支持少数群体,以防止和补偿种族歧视的影响。从20世纪90年代末到21世纪初,这类项目开始受到冲击。例如,在加利福尼亚州和德克萨斯州,平权行动项目被法院推翻,取而代之的是面向需求、种族中立的项目。结果,接受高等教育的黑人学生数量下降。这种下降促使一些项目以其他方式寻求多元化,例如录取一定比例的公立高中尖子生。尽管这增加了少数族裔的入学率,但许多大学官员仍然反对终止平权行动。

Part of the reason for this increase was affirmative action programs, programs designed to favor minority groups as a way to prevent and compensate for the effects of racial discrimination. Such programs came under attack beginning in the late 1990s and early 2000s. For example, in California and Texas, affirmative action programs were overturned by the courts and replaced by need-based and race-neutral programs. As a result, the number of blacks in higher education decreased. This decline has led to the development of programs that seek diversity in other ways, such as admitting a certain percentage of the top students from public high schools. Though this has boosted minority enrollments, many college officials remain opposed to ending affirmative action.

平权行动在美国持续成为热门话题。许多争论都围绕着平权行动的内涵及其如何转化为政策展开。它是否能够证明数字配额的合理性?如果是,这些配额的性质是什么?它是否要求种族成为决策的主要因素,还是仅仅允许种族作为决策因素之一?如果它允许考虑种族因素,那么种族因素的权重应该有多大?它是否要求或允许给予少数群体特定的优惠(如果是,这些优惠的力度可以有多大),还是所有群体都必须受到平等对待?

Affirmative action continues to be a hot topic in the United States. Much of the debate concerns precisely what is meant by affirmative action and how it translates into policies. Does it justify numerical quotas, and, if so, what is the nature of those quotas? Does it require that race be the major factor in decision making, or does it simply allow race to be considered as one of the factors in decisions? And if it allows a consideration of race, how much weight can be given to race? Does it require or allow that specific preferences be given to minority groups (and if so, how strong can those preferences be), or must all groups be treated equally?

为了举例说明可能出现的问题,我们不妨以德克萨斯大学的大学录取方案为例。该方案在其平权行动计划(给予黑人特殊优惠)被法院驳回后进行了修改。(该方案在录取过程中给予橄榄球运动员或校友子女特殊优惠的计划并未被驳回。)作为回应,德克萨斯大学决定允许德克萨斯州所有高中成绩排名前10%的学生自动入学。由于德克萨斯州许多市中心高中以黑人为主,标准化考试平均分数较低,而郊区高中以白人为主,标准化考试平均分数较高,因此,与仅考虑考试成绩的录取率相比,这项新方案赋予了黑人更大的优势。在采用“前10%”标准的平权行动计划下,这项新方案是否被允许?或者,它是否代表了一种策略,以避免学校被指控仍然优先考虑黑人?即使被允许,它是否可取? (有传闻称,一些白人为了考上德克萨斯大学,转学到市中心的学校。)更大的问题是:在招生过程中,什么是合理的自由裁量权(类似于大学允许学生群体实现地域多样性的自由裁量权),什么是不合理的种族自由裁量权?许多此类问题必须在不久的将来得到解决。

As an example of the issues that can arise, let’s consider the college admission program at the University of Texas. That program was changed after its affirmative action program, which gave specific preferences to blacks, was one of the programs that the courts struck down. (Its program giving specific preferences to football players or to legacies—children of alumni— in admissions was not struck down.) In response, the University of Texas decided to allow automatic admission to the top 10 percent of all Texas high school students. Because many of the inner-city high schools in Texas are predominantly black and, on average, score low on standardized tests, whereas suburban high schools are predominantly white and, on average, score high on standardized tests, this new program gave blacks an advantage compared to their chances of admission if only test scores had been considered. Was this new program allowable under an affirmative action plan that used a “top 10 percent” standard, or did it represent a strategy to avoid the accusation that the schools were still giving preference to blacks? Even if it were allowable, is it desirable? (There were stories about some whites transferring into innercity schools so that they would get admitted to the University of Texas.) The bigger question is: What is reasonable discretion in admissions (discretion similar to the allowable attempt of colleges to have a geographic diversity in their student body) and what is unreasonable dis cretion when it comes to race? Many such issues will have to be dealt with in the near future.

另一个例子是密歇根大学,该校根据分数筛选申请者。在总分150分中,申请者如果是黑人可得20分,如果就读于少数族裔为主的高中也可得20分。(SAT成绩只占12分。)这种偏好是否过高?如果是,多少分才算适中?在思考这个问题的答案时,不妨想想校友关系通常是富裕的白人,他们根据与校友的关系获得1到4分。这是否过高?如果是,多少分才算适中?拥有最终裁决权的美国最高法院裁定,在本科阶段,黑人学生的加分太过类似平权法案。然而,最高法院裁定,大学可以在录取决定中考虑种族因素,从而使平权法案合法化。然而,未来的裁决可能会有所不同。很难预测最高法院将做出何种裁决,因为最高法院的组成会随着时间推移而发生变化,法官会退休,并由持有不同司法理念的法官取而代之。2016 年斯卡利亚大法官去世就是一个例子。他是一位保守派大法官,奥巴马总统提名了一位自由派大法官接替他。共和党人拒绝接受他的提名,希望在 2016 年大选中选出一位共和党总统,该总统会提名另一位保守派大法官接替他。他们的策略取得了成功,2017 年,唐纳德·特朗普总统挑选的新保守派大法官尼尔·戈萨奇宣誓就任最高法院法官。2020 年,露丝·巴德·金斯伯格去世,另一位特朗普任命的法官艾米·康尼·巴雷特接替她出任最高法院法官,最高法院的立场变得更加保守。

Another example involved the University of Michigan, where applicants were selected on the basis of points. Applicants were given 20 points for being black and 20 points for attending a predominantly minority high school, out of a total of 150 points. (SAT scores accounted for only 12 points.) Was this too much of a preference, and, if so, what would not be too much? When thinking about an answer to this, consider also that legacies, who are generally white and well-off, were given 1 to 4 points for their alumni relationships. Was that too much, and, if so, what would not be too much? The US Supreme Court, which has the ultimate power to make these decisions in the United States, decided that, at an undergraduate level, the points for black students were too much like affirmative action. However, it held that colleges could take race into account in their admission decisions, thereby legalizing affirmative action. Future decisions may, however, be different. The reason it is difficult to predict what the Court will decide is because the Court’s composition changes over time, as judges retire and are replaced by others with different judicial philosophies. The death of Justice Scalia in 2016 is an example. He was a conservative justice, and President Obama nominated a liberal justice to replace him. Republicans refused to take up his nomination, hoping that in the 2016 election, a Republican president would be elected, who would nominate another conservative justice to replace him. Their strategy paid off, and in 2017 a new conservative justice picked by President Donald Trump, Neil Gorsuch, was sworn in to the Supreme Court. In 2020, the Court took a more conservative slant when Ruth Bader Ginsberg died and was replaced by another Trump appointee, Amy Coney Barrett.

消除歧视的痕迹如果我们回顾一下从早期殖民时期到第二次世界大战美国各地对黑人的歧视程度,就会发现战后在争取平等待遇方面取得了长足的进步,尽管这与许多人的希望和期待相去甚远。军队中的种族隔离曾是各军种的普遍规则,但到 20 世纪 50 年代中期,这一政策已被彻底废除。在酒店、汽车旅馆、餐馆和其他公共场所对黑人的歧视实际上已经消除,部分原因是公众态度的转变,部分原因是法律禁止歧视。当然,并非所有较为隐蔽的歧视形式都已消失,但至少它们处于防御状态。

Eliminating the Vestiges of Discrimination When we consider the extent to which discrimination against blacks prevailed throughout this country from early colonial times to World War II, the progress toward equal treatment since that war has been substantial, even though it has fallen far short of the hopes and expectations of many Segregation in the armed forces, formerly the unchallenged rule in all branches of the service, was completely abandoned as a policy by the mid-1950s. Discrimination against blacks in hotels, motels, restaurants, and other public places has been virtually eliminated, partly because of changes in public attitudes and partly because of laws forbidding it. To be sure, not all the subtler forms of discrimination have disappeared, but at least they are on the defensive.

另一个减少黑人歧视的领域是购房权。以前,房屋购买者可能需要签署一份限制性契约,同意不将房屋出租或出售给特定种族或文化群体的成员。这种契约有时使得黑人无法购买或租赁住房,除非是在过度拥挤的黑人社区,这些社区往往是贫民窟。但在1948年,最高法院裁定,限制性契约违反公共政策,法院不得强制执行。1968年,国会通过了《公平住房法》,禁止在约80%的住房出售或租赁中存在种族歧视;同年,最高法院将1866年的一项联邦法律解释为禁止在任何住房的出售或租赁中存在种族歧视。虽然这些举措并未完全消除住房销售中的歧视,但它们使得房地产公司(尤其是房地产公司)难以公然歧视。

Another area in which discrimination against blacks has been reduced is in the right to buy property. Formerly, the purchaser of a house might be required to sign a restrictive covenant in which he or she agreed not to rent or sell to members of specified racial or cultural groups. This covenant sometimes made it impossible for blacks to buy or rent housing except in overcrowded black neighborhoods that were often slums. But in 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that restrictive covenants are contrary to public policy and may not be enforced by the courts. In 1968, Congress passed a Fair Housing Act prohibiting racial discrimination in the sale or rental of about 80 percent of all housing, and in the same year the Supreme Court interpreted an 1866 federal law as banning racial discrimination in the sale or rental of any housing. Although these actions have not completely eliminated discrimination in the sale of housing, they have made it difficult, especially for real estate firms to blatantly discriminate.

社会科学家发现,入门级工作和低技能岗位上存在着对黑人的严重歧视。研究人员让具有相似工作经历的年轻高中毕业生申请同样的工作。34% 的白人申请人得到了回电,而 14% 的黑人申请人得到了回电。在另一项实验中,社会科学家让虚构的个人在线申请工作。一些人的名字听起来像白人,比如格雷格·凯利,一些人的名字则更偏向非裔美国人,比如贾马尔·杰克逊。他们发现,名字听起来像白人的人得到的回电更多,而且名字听起来像白人的人大约相当于八年的工作经验,这意味着名字听起来像黑人的人必须多出八年的工作经验,才能获得与其他方面相似的白人相同的回电率。当黑人和白人申请人都有犯罪记录时,歧视会更加严重;在第一个实验中,有犯罪记录的黑人得到回电的机会只有 5%,而有犯罪记录的白人得到回电的机会则高达 17%。由于几乎五分之一的黑人男性都曾服过兵役,这给他们重新融入社会带来了严重的问题。

One place where social scientists have found significant discrimination against blacks is in entry-level jobs and low-skilled positions. Researchers had young high school graduates with similar job histories apply for the same jobs. Thirty-four percent of the white applicants were called back; 14 percent of the blacks were called back. In another experiment, social scientists had fictitious individuals apply for jobs online. Some had white-sounding names, such as Greg Kelly, and some had more African American names, such as Jamal Jackson. They found that the white-sounding names received many more callbacks and that the white-sounding name was worth approximately eight years of experience, meaning that a person with a black-sounding name had to have eight years’ more experience to have the same callback rate as an otherwise similar white. The discrimination was even greater when both black and white applicants had criminal records; in the first experiment, a black person with a criminal record had only a 5 percent chance of getting a callback, whereas a white person with a criminal record had a 17 percent chance of getting a callback. Since almost one in five of all black men have served some time, this presents a serious problem for integrating them back into the community.

系统性种族主义和微歧视

Systemic Racism and Microaggressions

最近关于种族的争论导致了一些术语的产生,这些术语有多种解释,最终使双方都感到愤怒,而不是澄清问题。两个这样的术语是系统性种族主义微侵犯系统性种族主义是深深植根于社会体系中以至于大多数人都没有注意到的种族主义。它导致人们在自己的行为和语言中贬低他人,甚至丝毫没有意识到自己正在这样做。这种行为被称为微侵犯。微侵犯可能包括如下评论:

Recent debates about race have led to the development of terms that are subject to various interpretations, and end up making both sides mad, rather than clarifying the issues. Two such terms are systemic racism and micro-aggressions. Systemic racism is racism that is so deeply embedded into the social system that it is not noticed by most individuals. It leads people to put down others in their actions and language without even the slightest recognition that they are doing so. Such actions are called microaggressions. Microaggressions might include comments such as the following:

还有很多,如果仔细聆听,就会发现几乎每个人的语言中都存在微侵犯。事实上,所有像我们一样,通过外貌、姓名或声音对他人进行分类的人,都存在可能被解读为种族主义的观点。因此,结构性种族主义和微侵犯是存在的。问题是:该如何应对?在一个运转良好的社会中,大多数微侵犯都会被忽视。微侵犯的层次如此之多,以至于追踪它们将是一项全职工作——一项对个人或社会回报都不高的工作。我们的社会根深蒂固地存在着对许多群体的系统性偏袒;黑人是一个例子,但还有其他例子。争论的重点不应该是它是否存在,而应该是,既然它存在,如何实现预期结果,即朝着可接受的机会和结果平等水平迈进。这是一个更难的问题,没有简单的答案。

There are many more, and if one listens carefully one can discover microaggressions in almost everyone’s language. The reality is that views that can be interpreted as racist exist in all people who categorize individuals by physical appearance, name, or sound, as we all do. So structural racism and microaggressions exist. The question is: what to do about them? In a well-functioning society, most microaggressions are overlooked. There are so many levels of micro aggressions that keeping track of them would be a full time job—a job without a high return to the individual or society. Our society is embedded with systemic favoritism for numerous groups; blacks are one example, but there are others. The debate should not be about whether it exists, but, given its existence, how to achieve the desired results of moving toward an acceptable level of equality of both opportunity and outcome. That is a much harder question that doesn’t have an easy answer.

黑人与白人的社会关系。经济学家贡纳尔·默达尔在其经典著作《美国困境》中指出,白人对黑人最强烈的偏见在于异族通婚和其他亲密的社会交往。这一观点似乎至今仍成立。绝大多数白人认为黑人应该在就业、住房、教育、医疗设施和合法权利方面享有平等的机会,但他们中的许多人仍然对异族通婚感到不安(就像许多黑人一样),并且在发展亲密的社会交往方面也常常感到尴尬。

Black-White Social Relations In his classic book, An American Dilemma, economist Gunnar Myrdal observed that the area of strongest white prejudice against blacks had to do with intermarriage and other intimate social contacts. This seems still to be true. The great majority of whites believe that blacks should have equality of opportunity in employment, housing, education, health facilities, and legal rights, but many of them are still uneasy about intermarriage (just as many blacks are) and often are awkward in developing close social contacts.

孩子们通常没有天生的偏见。 © MBI/Alamy Stock Photo

Children tend to have little inherent prejudice. © MBI/Alamy Stock Photo

在一些群体中,尤其是年轻一代,存在着一种趋势,即打破种族间社会交往的障碍,包括跨种族婚姻的障碍。二战后,美国超过半数的州都制定了法律,禁止白人与任何被法律定义为“黑人”的人结婚,但1967年,最高法院裁定,任何州都不得禁止跨种族婚姻。尽管如此,如今只有约17%的婚姻是跨种族的,高于1980年的3.2%。黑人与白人的跨种族婚姻数量——只有约五分之一的跨种族婚姻是黑人与白人之间的婚姻。然而,这低估了人们对黑人与白人婚姻态度的转变。在2021年的皮尤民意调查中,94%的人赞成黑人/白人通婚,高于1960年的4%。

Among some groups, especially in the younger generation, there is a trend toward breaking down the obstacles to social contacts between the races, including those barriers to interracial marriages. After World War II, more than half of our states had laws prohibiting marriage between a white person and anyone defined legally as a “Negro,” but in 1967 the Supreme Court ruled that no state may ban interracial marriages. Still, today only about 17 percent of all marriages are interracial. This is up from 3.2 percent in 1980. That the number of black-white interracial marriages—only about one-fifth of those interracial marriages are between blacks and whites. However, it understates the change in attitude about black-white marriages. In a 2021 Pew poll, 94% approved of black/white intermarriages. That is up from 4% in 1960.

歧视不仅存在于黑人和白人之间,也存在于黑人之间。肤色较深的黑人会被冠以贬义的称呼,肤色较浅的黑人也会受到不同的对待。此外,黑人的肤色越深,白人对他们的歧视似乎就越明显。一项针对同一家族中肤色不同的兄弟的研究发现,肤色较浅的兄弟往往收入更高,遭受的歧视也更少。

Discrimination occurs not only between blacks and whites but also among blacks, with darker-skinned blacks called derogatory names and treated differently by lighter-skinned blacks. Moreover, the discrimination that does occur by whites seems to be more pronounced the darker the skin the black person has. In a study of brothers from the same family who differed by skin color, it was found that the lighter-skinned brothers tended to have higher incomes and experience less discrimination.

2008年,美国在种族关系方面迈出了重要一步,一位肤色白皙、名字极具非洲色彩的黑人总统——巴拉克·奥巴马当选。对许多人来说,那次选举表明美国在解决种族问题方面取得了长足进步。然而,从持续的种族紧张局势可以看出,美国还有很长的路要走。

In 2008, the United States made a major step forward in race relations with the election of a light-skinned black president with a very African name—Barack Obama. That election was, to many, an indication that the United States had come a long way in solving the race problem. But, as can be seen in the continuing racial tension, it has a long way to go.

最终,如果将黑人未婚夫带回白人家庭,或将白人未婚夫带回黑人家庭,并不比将金发未婚夫带回黑发家庭,或将黑发未婚夫带回金发家庭更不引人注意,那么我们就知道种族问题已经得到解决。

Ultimately, we will know that the race problem has been solved if bringing home a black fiance to a white family, or bringing home a white fiance to a black family, raises no more eyebrows than bringing a blonde fiance home to a brunette’s family, or a brunette fiance home to a blondes family.

美国黑人的未来20世纪60年代初,在贡纳尔·默达尔完成《美国的困境》大约二十年后,有人问他是否预见到了解决我们种族问题的办法。他回答说:“嗯,技术问题可以找到解决办法;但社会问题,尤其是像黑人问题这样本质上如此复杂复杂的社会问题,绝对没有解决办法。”

The Future of Black Americans In the early 1960s, some twenty years after he had completed An American Dilemma, Gunnar Myrdal was asked if he foresaw any solution to our race problems. He replied, “Well, you can find solutions to technical problems; but in social problems, particularly those that are so intrinsically difficult and mixed up as the [black] problem, there is no solution in an absolute sense.”

在他的研究中,默达尔将美国的种族问题称为白人问题,因为白人占绝大多数,掌握着大部分财富和权力。他认为黑人的进步依赖于白人的合作;依赖于消除歧视的障碍。但显而易见的是,即使所有白人(和黑人)都能迅速彻底地摆脱种族偏见,黑人作为一个群体,要彻底克服几代奴隶制以及数十年来极端歧视带来的所有影响,仍需时间。

In his study, Myrdal called the race problem in the United States a white problem because the whites are the great majority and hold the bulk of wealth and power. He saw progress by blacks to be dependent on white cooperation; on a lifting of the bars of discrimination. But it is clear that even if all whites (and blacks) could quickly and completely rid themselves of ethnic prejudice, it would still take time for blacks as a group to overcome completely all the effects of generations of slavery followed by decades of extreme discrimination.

一些人甚至认为,黑人应该为过去遭受的不公正得到赔偿,而这种赔偿对于实现平等至关重要。他们收集了有关公司和大学历史的信息,并表明其中一些公司从奴隶贸易和对黑人的压迫中获利。他们认为,公司和大学需要将这些利润偿还给这些奴隶的后代。另一些人则认为,赔偿恰恰是实现平等的错误途径,因为从实际角度来看,赔偿不太可能取得显著成效。让今天的人们为其祖先犯下的错误负责是一个非常牵强的主张。试图这样做会使辩论偏离更重要的问题:如何在现在和将来为黑人提供更好的机会。无论就赔偿问题做出何种决定,任何群体都无法给予其他群体平等,除非公平、同情地对待其成员,并帮助他们提供机会。任何种族的弱势群体,仅仅因为获得不合格的工作或被录取到学术水平达不到要求的大学,都无法获得与普通公民的平等。然而,他们可以获得机会,如果他们有意愿和能力,还可以获得弥补学术缺陷的机会。与工作表现无关的学术缺陷也可以被消除。

Some have even argued that blacks are owed reparations for the injustices of the past, and that such reparations are necessary to achieve equality. They have collected information about companies’ and universities’ pasts and have shown that a number of them profited from the slave trade and oppression of blacks. They argue that companies and universities need to repay those profits to the descendants of those slaves. Others argue that reparations are precisely the wrong way to achieve equality, since reparations are unlikely to achieve significant results from a practical point of view. To hold people today accountable for wrongs of their ancestors is a highly tenuous proposition. Trying to do so will move the debate away from the more important issue of how to provide better opportunities for blacks now and in the future. Regardless of what is decided about reparations, no group can give equality to another group except in the sense of treating its members fairly and sympathetically and helping to provide them with opportunities. No disadvantaged people of any race will achieve equality with the average citizen merely by being given jobs for which they are not qualified or by being admitted to colleges whose academic standards they cannot meet. They can, however, be offered opportunities for job training and, if they have the will and ability, chances to make up for academic deficiencies. Academic deficiencies that are irrelevant to job performance can also be eliminated.

关于如何应对不平等的争论,在关于平权行动计划的辩论中得到了充分体现。平权行动计划的支持者认为,这些计划对于抵消过去的歧视是必要的。批评者则指责这些计划对少数族裔和白人都不公平。他们认为,平权行动计划将黑人置于他们无法胜任的境地,对黑人的偏爱是对贫困白人的歧视。

The debate over what to do about inequality has manifested itself in the debate about affirmative action programs. Advocates of affirmative action programs argue that such programs are necessary to offset past discrimination. Critics charge that such programs are unfair both to the minorities and to whites. They say that affirmative action programs place blacks in situations for which they are unqualified and that preference for blacks discriminates against needy whites.

正如我们之前所述,为了回应批评,德克萨斯州和加利福尼亚州等一些州已开始用“需要”取代“种族”和“性别”作为优先待遇的决定因素。例如,1996年,加利福尼亚州通过了一项旨在“废除平权行动”的法律。根据该法律,“州政府在公共就业、公共教育或公共承包方面,不得基于种族、性别、肤色、民族或国籍歧视或给予任何个人或群体优先待遇。”这项强制中立的声明废除了此前除了其他类型的平权行动外,还优先考虑少数族裔和女性的立法。其他州正在考虑类似的立法。

As we stated earlier, in response to criticism some states such as Texas and California have started substituting “need” for “race” and “gender” as the determining factor for preferential treatment. For instance, in 1996 California passed a law designed “to abolish affirmative action.” According to this law, “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.” This statement of forced neutrality abolished previous legislation that had favored preferential treatment for minorities and women, in addition to other types of affirmative action. Other states are considering similar legislation.

取消基于肤色的平权法案并不一定意味着不再优先考虑黑人;只是优先考虑不再仅仅基于肤色,因此来自中上阶层家庭的白人孩子和黑人孩子将受到平等对待。然而,由于许多黑人生活贫困,且背景并不重视教育,他们与背景相似的白人一样,在招生和招聘中可以获得优先考虑,因为为了取得如今的成就,他们克服了比富裕且支持教育背景的人更大的障碍。

Eliminating affirmative action on the basis of skin color will not necessarily mean an end to giving preference to blacks; it will simply be preference not solely based on skin color, so a white child and a black child of upper-middle-class families will be treated equally. However, because many blacks are poor and come from backgrounds without a strong focus on education, they, along with whites from similar backgrounds, can be given preference in admissions and hiring because, to achieve what they have, they had to overcome greater obstacles than a person from a rich, pro-education background.

西班牙裔是美国增长最快的少数族裔。 © Bob Daemmrich/Alamy Stock Photo

Hispanics are the fastest-growing minority in the United States. © Bob Daemmrich/Alamy Stock Photo

只要黑人仍是我们社会中一个独特的族群,种族偏见和歧视能否完全消除,就值得怀疑。歧视在世界各地的大多数社会关系中都或多或少地存在着。它发生在个人之间、个人与群体之间,以及包括家庭在内的各种群体之间的交往中。但在教科书作者看来,剥夺整个族群或文化群体的平等公民权利以及平等的教育、政治和经济机会,是一种社会不应容忍的歧视。

It is doubtful whether ethnic prejudice and discrimination can be completely eliminated as long as blacks constitute a distinct ethnic group in our society. Discrimination is inherent to some degree in most social relationships all over the world. It occurs in the contacts between individuals, between individuals and groups, and between groups of many types, including families. But, in the view of the textbook authors, to deny to an entire ethnic or cultural group equal civil rights and equal educational, political, and economic opportunities is a type of discrimination that a society should not tolerate.

西班牙裔

Hispanics

美国最大的少数族裔群体是西班牙裔,即西班牙语裔人士。从 1988 年到 2000 年,美国的西班牙裔人口增长了一倍多,此后增长速度更快。2021 年,超过 6100 万美国公民(超过总人口的 18%)认为自己与西班牙有历史联系。在总数中,约 67% 的人表示他们的家庭原籍地是墨西哥,约 9% 的人表示来自波多黎各,约 4% 的人表示来自萨尔瓦多,其余的人则来自其他拉丁美洲国家。超过 65% 的西班牙裔美国人是第二代,而且现在的生育率更高,因此他们在美国未来的角色可能会变得更加重要。合法和非法移民一直是拉美裔人口增长的重要组成部分。2020年,美国约有1020万无证移民,其中约70%是拉美裔。过去十年,这一数字略有下降。

The largest minority group in the United States is Hispanics, or individuals of Spanish-speaking origin. From 1988 to 2000, the Hispanic population in the United States more than doubled, and since then it grew even faster. In 2021 more than sixty-one million US citizens (more than 18 percent of the population) identified themselves as having historical links to Spain. Of the total number, about 67 percent gave Mexico as their family’s place of origin, about 9 percent gave Puerto Rico, about 4 percent gave El Salvador, and the remainder gave other Latin American countries. The majority of Hispanics, over 65 percent, are second generation and now tend to have higher birthrates, so their role in the United States will likely become more important in the future. Immigration, both legal and illegal, has been an important part of Hispanic population growth, and in 2020 there were about 10.2 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, about 70 percent of whom were Hispanic. In the last decade, it has declined slightly.

墨西哥裔美国人是所有西班牙裔少数群体中最大的群体,也是我们增长最快的群体之一。由于出生率高,他们中很大一部分人都很年轻。五分之四的墨西哥裔美国人居住在美国西南部。绝大多数人集中在德克萨斯州和加利福尼亚州,但也有相当一部分人居住在亚利桑那州、新墨西哥州和科罗拉多州。许多来自墨西哥的移民是流动工人,他们依靠季节性迁移来寻找工作。美国经济对爱荷华州、堪萨斯州和佐治亚州等州的工人需求旺盛,这意味着在20世纪90年代和21世纪初,许多墨西哥裔美国人移居到了这些州。事实上,美国各地的许多农场都开始依赖无证墨西哥移民,因为墨西哥人愿意接受比美国工人更低的工资和更辛苦的工作。虽然有些人有西班牙血统,但大多数人是西班牙和土著血统的混血儿。他们往往居住在隔离的居住区,保留着自己的习俗,并继续讲西班牙语。他们通常缺乏其他种族邻居的教育水平,他们的父母通常不会说流利的英语(尽管出生在这里的孩子会说)。在近年来移民大量涌入的州,他们有时不仅会受到长期定居人口的歧视,还会受到在该国居住时间比新移民更久的墨西哥人的歧视。所有这些因素共同阻碍了他们的经济和社会进步。

Mexican Americans make up the largest of all Hispanic minority groups and they are one of our most rapidly growing groups. Because of their high birthrate, a large proportion of them are young. Four out of five Mexican Americans live in the Southwest. The great majority are concentrated in Texas and California, but substantial numbers are also found in Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. Many immigrants from Mexico are migrant workers who depend upon moving seasonally from place to place to find work. The US economy’s high demand for workers in states such as Iowa, Kansas, and Georgia has meant that in the 1990s and early 2000s many Mexican Americans moved to those states. In fact, many farms throughout the United States have come to rely on undocumented Mexican immigrants because of the Mexicans’ willingness to work for lower wages and do harder jobs than US workers. Although some are of Spanish descent, most are of mixed Spanish and indigenous ancestry. They tend to live in segregated residential areas, to retain their own customs, and to continue to speak Spanish. They often lack the level of education of their neighbors of other races, and their parents often do not speak English fluently (although children who were born here do). In states where there has been a large influx of immigrants in recent years, they sometimes are discriminated against not only by the long-established population but also by Mexicans who have been in the country longer than the newest arrivals. All these factors work together to slow their economic and social progress.

虽然许多墨西哥裔美国人仍然居住在美国西南部,从事农业工作,其中也有相对较少的一部分人是移民,但绝大多数(接近85%)居住在城市地区,有时他们在那里形成小型聚居地。在城市中,墨西哥裔美国人从事许多职业,但目前从事高级职业的人数相对较少。作为一个群体,他们的收入远低于欧洲裔白人。但与早期移民群体的后代一样,一些人正在努力提升自己的社会和经济地位,如今约有34%的墨西哥裔美国人从事白领工作。

Though many Mexican Americans still live in the Southwest and are employed in agriculture, and a relatively small number of them are still migrants, the great majority—close to 85 percent—live in urban areas, where they sometimes form small colonies. In cities, Mexican Americans work in many job areas, but as yet relatively few are found in high-ranking occupations. As a group, their incomes are much lower than those of white Americans of European descent. But like the descendants of earlier immigrant groups, some are finding their way up the social and economic ladder, and today about 34 percent of them hold white-collar jobs.

亚裔

Asian Descent

2021年,美国约有2000万亚裔。他们遍布美国各地,但大多数居住在大城市。尽管亚裔遭受歧视,但他们中的许多人在经济和社会方面都取得了良好的发展。

In 2021, about twenty million people of Asian descent lived in the United States. They have spread throughout the country, but most live in large cities. Despite prejudice against them, many of them have done well both financially and socially.

加州发现金矿后,大批来自中国的华裔移民首次涌入美国。仅1852年一年,就有约2万人获准入境。他们从事厨师、洗衣工和矿井工人等职业。淘金热结束后,许多人受雇修建横贯大陆的铁路西段。他们也涉足农业和渔业等行业。但对白人定居者来说,他们是陌生且不受欢迎的。随着他们人数的增长,敌意也日益加深,他们遭受着各种歧视。甚至发生了骚乱,他们被追赶上街、殴打或私刑处死。这种敌意部分源于工作竞争。华裔工人甘愿过着贫困的生活,如果被迫如此,他们也愿意接受极低的工资。最终,国会于1882年通过了《排华法案》,该法案实际上暂停了所有华裔移民,直到1943年才被废除。

Ethnic Chinese Immigrants from China first came to this country in large numbers when gold was discovered in California. In the single year of 1852, some 20,000 were admitted. They worked as cooks and launderers and as laborers in the mines. When the gold rush was over, many of them were employed in building the western portion of the transcontinental railroad. They also spread out into occupations such as agriculture and fishing. But to the white settlers, they were strange and unwelcome. As their numbers grew, antagonism increased and they endured many types of discrimination. There were even riots in which they were chased through the streets and beaten or lynched. Part of this antagonism resulted from competition for jobs. Chinese workers were willing to live on very little and, if forced to do so, would work for extremely low wages. Finally, in 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which virtually suspended all Chinese immigration until it was repealed in 1943.

1965年,移民法修订,废除了基于国籍的配额,结束了对华裔及所有其他国籍移民的歧视。部分原因是美国对至少始于1970年的东南亚动乱的回应,移民法随后经历了数次自由化,尤其是针对受过高等教育的人才。移民法本身就很复杂,但目前我们可以说,它使得华裔和东南亚移民到美国的人数显著增加。

In 1965, a revision of immigration laws ended discrimination against the Chinese and the immigrants from all other countries by abolishing quotas based on national origin. Due in part to US response to the upheavals in Southeast Asia that began at least as early as 1970, immigration laws have undergone several subsequent liberalizations, especially for highly trained individuals. Immigration law is complex, but at the present time we can say that it has permitted a significant increase in the number of Chinese and Southeast Asian immigrants to the United States.

日本族裔后裔:国会通过《排华法案》后,越来越多的日本人开始涌入西海岸。他们大多定居在加州,不久之后,就像之前的华人一样,开始遭遇偏见和歧视。与华人一样,这种反感部分源于经济利益冲突。许多日本人成为蔬菜种植户(种植新鲜蔬菜的人),由于他们全家都愿意辛勤劳作,生活拮据,加州本地的蔬菜种植户抱怨他们无法与日本人竞争。此外,也有人认为,日本人对祖国的强烈忠诚使得同化变得不可能。

Japanese Ethnic Descent After Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Japanese began arriving on the West Coast in increasing numbers. Most of them settled in California, and before long they, like the Chinese before them, began to encounter prejudice and discrimination. As with the Chinese, the feeling against them was partly based on conflicting economic interests. Many Japanese became truck gardeners (growers of fresh vegetables), and because whole families were willing to work hard and live on very little, the native California truck gardeners complained that they could not meet Japanese competition. Also, it was argued that the strong loyalty of the Japanese to their homeland made assimilation impossible.

第二次世界大战期间,反日情绪达到顶峰。美国政府强制将11.7万名日裔美国人从西海岸迁往内陆的安置中心。这一举动最初被解释为安全措施,但现在普遍认为是不可原谅的不公正,因为驱逐并非基于不忠诚,而仅仅基于国籍,这意味着对数千名忠诚的美国公民的严重歧视。此外,这些公民被剥夺了公民自由,被强行带离家园,关押在与军营毫无二致的集中营里。1945年,撤离令被撤销,但许多日本人并没有返回西海岸,他们更愿意生活在歧视不那么明显的地区。

During World War II, anti-Japanese sentiment came to a head. The US government forcibly moved 117,000 people of Japanese birth or ancestry away from the West Coast to relocation centers further inland. This move was explained as a security measure, but it is now generally recognized as an inexcusable injustice, for removal was not based on disloyalty but only on national origin, and it meant gross discrimination against thousands of loyal US citizens. Furthermore, these citizens were deprived of their civil liberties, having been forcibly taken from their homes and detained in camps that differed little from military barracks. In 1945, the evacuation order was rescinded, but many Japanese did not return to the West Coast, preferring to live in areas where prejudice against them was less marked.

近年来,针对日本人的偏见已大大减少。1988年,美国政府终于向被拘留的幸存日裔美国人道歉,并同意向每人赔偿2万美元。

In recent years, prejudice against the Japanese has greatly diminished. In 1988, the US government finally apologized to the surviving Japanese Americans who had been interned and agreed to pay each of them $20,000.

其他亚裔族群多年来,其他亚裔移民的数量不一。20世纪70年代,数十万越南移民获准进入美国,以逃避祖国的政治压迫。近年来,由于高科技领域人才短缺,许多受过良好教育的印度人、巴基斯坦人和其他东南亚人获准进入美国。在许多高科技公司中,外国出生的员工数量超过了美国出生的员工。

Other Asian Ethnic Groups Over the years, there have been varying numbers of other Asian immigrants. In the 1970s, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese immigrants were allowed into the United States to escape political oppression in their native country. More recently, many highly trained Indians, Pakistanis, and other Southeast Asians have been allowed in because of a shortage of workers in high-tech fields. In a number of high-tech companies, foreign-born workers outnumber US-born workers.

亚裔美国移民高度自我选择。他们主要由受过高等教育的人士组成,他们发现在美国相对容易获得成功。他们通常从事工作条件较为宽松的低级工作,并努力工作以求进步。例如,许多印度人在汽车旅馆工作,在学会了经营之道并攒够了钱后,便收购了汽车旅馆,从而为新的印度移民提供了就业机会。如今,许多当地汽车旅馆的老板都是印度裔。甜甜圈店也是如此。商店和其他一些职业;例如,加利福尼亚州的大多数甜甜圈店都是由印第安人拥有的。

Asian American immigration has been highly self-selective. It has primarily consisted of highly educated individuals who have found it relatively easy to succeed in the United States. Often they have taken low-level jobs that only had loosely regulated working conditions, and they have worked hard to advance. For example, many Indians worked in motels and then, having learned the business and saved enough money, bought the motels and thus provided jobs for new Indian immigrants. Today, many local motels are owned by people of Indian descent. The same is true of doughnut shops and some other occupations; for example, most doughnut shops in California are owned by Indians.

亚裔美国人的成功导致他们被刻板地视为“模范少数族裔”。因此,尽管他们是少数族裔,但他们进入顶尖学校的人数却更多,而且往往比包括白人在内的其他群体取得更好的成绩。因此,为了保持多元化,一些大学,尤其是那些位于亚裔人口众多地区的大学,会歧视亚裔美国人,提高他们入学的难度。这引发了人们对不公平的抱怨;并非所有亚裔美国人都富有、受过良好教育且事业有成。

The success of Asian Americans has led to the stereotype of them as a “model minority.” Thus, even though they are a minority, they attend top schools in greater numbers and often achieve better results than other groups, including whites. Thus, to maintain diversity, some colleges, especially those located in areas with a large Asian population, discriminate against Asian Americans by making it more difficult for them to get accepted into those colleges. This leads to complaints of unfairness; not all Asian Americans are rich, educated, and successful.

阿拉伯裔美国人和中东裔美国人

Arab Americans and Americans of Middle Eastern Descent

我们要讨论的最后一个少数群体是阿拉伯裔美国人,他们的数量超过 350 万,其中 90% 以上居住在城市地区。作为一个群体,阿拉伯裔美国人的生活相对较好,他们的平均收入比美国全国平均水平高出 22%。传统的多元文化努力往往忽视这个族群,尽管他们面临着刻板印象和偏见。第一波来自中东的阿拉伯移民发生在 1875 年至 1920 年之间。早期的阿拉伯移民大多来自黎巴嫩和叙利亚;他们大多是寻求经济机会的基督徒。随着美国开始实施限制,移民速度随后放缓。第二波移民潮始于 20 世纪 40 年代,原因是阿以冲突和地区内战;这个群体来自一个更加多元化的地区,许多人信奉伊斯兰教。但与早期的群体一样,他们来到美国时,大多数人的经济状况都更加稳定。

The last minority we will discuss is Arab Americans, of whom there are more than 3.5 million, over 90 percent of whom live in urban areas. As a group, Arab Americans have done relatively well, and their average incomes are 22 percent higher than the US national average. Traditional multicultural efforts often overlook this ethnic group, though they face stereotyping and prejudice. The first wave of immigration of Arabs from the Middle East took place between 1875 and 1920. Most of these early Arab immigrants were from Lebanon and Syria; most were Christians seeking economic opportunities. Immigration then slowed as the United States began imposing restrictions. The second wave began in the 1940s because of the Arab-Israeli conflict and regional civil wars; this group came from a much more diverse area, and many practiced Islam. But like the earlier group, most were more financially secure when they came.

21世纪初,阿拉伯裔美国人的日子尤其艰难。由于“9·11”恐怖分子拥有中东血统,许多阿拉伯裔美国人遭受了歧视和偏见,尽管他们几乎所有人都强烈谴责恐怖分子,并视自己为美国人。尽管他们可能认为美国在中东的政策偏向以色列,但许多其他美国人以及世界各地的许多人都有同样的感受,这绝非不爱国。新的阿拉伯裔美国移民尤其容易受到歧视。美国政府对来自阿拉伯和穆斯林世界的非移民外国人实施了强制登记。他们还会被列入名单,并受到执法部门的特别监视。因此,“打击”恐怖主义的行动导致阿拉伯裔美国人在旅行、住房、教育和工作机会方面遭受歧视。这种歧视究竟是政府提供安全保障的必然结果,还是一种不可接受的歧视形式,目前尚有争议。

The early 2000s were particularly difficult for Arab Americans. Because the 9/11 terrorists were of Middle Eastern descent, many Arab Americans have been subject to discrimination and prejudice, even though almost all of them strongly condemn the terrorists and consider themselves Americans. Although they may feel that US policy in the Middle East is tilted in Israel’s favor, that is a feeling shared with many other Americans, and with many individuals throughout the world, and is in no way unpatriotic. New Arab American immigrants are especially singled out. The US government has implemented a mandatory registration for nonimmigrant aliens from the Arab and Muslim world. They are also profiled and subject to special surveillance by law enforcement. Thus, the “crackdown” on terrorism created discrimination toward Arab Americans in travel, housing, and educational, and work opportunities. Whether that discrimination was a necessary side effect of the government’s need to provide security, or was an unacceptable form of discrimination, is currently debated.

移民与少数民族

Immigration and Minorities

20世纪初,美国移民数量达到顶峰,每年约有100万人涌入,其中绝大多数来自欧洲。不同民族倾向于聚居在一起。有一段时间,他们成了文化的孤岛,彼此之间仍然使用着各自的语言,延续着各自的传统。起初,大多数移民从事非技术性工作,处于阶级结构的最底层,结果导致更大比例的老年移民居民进入上层阶级,而这些老年人原本可能处于最底层。这些老年居民的优势在于他们更早地融入了美国社会,并且在那里过得更自在,因此他们不仅熟悉语言和习俗,而且在很多情况下还积累了财富。

In the early 1900s, when immigration into the United States reached its peak, some one million persons were arriving every year, the great majority from Europe. Nationalities tended to group together. For a while, they became isolated islands of culture, continuing among themselves to speak their own language and to perpetuate their own traditions. At first, most immigrants took unskilled jobs and occupied the lowest place in the class structure, consequently pushing into the upper classes a larger proportion of older immigrant residents than might otherwise have been occupying the lowest place themselves. These older residents had the advantage of being more integrated into and comfortable in American society earlier, as a result of which they not only knew the language and customs but also, in many cases, had accumulated property.

某种程度上,欧洲移民的境况与少数族裔群体相似。区别在于,尽管大多数来自少数族裔群体的第二代和第三代移民无论如何美国化,仍然被孤立,被认为无法被同化,但来自高加索族裔群体的人,在一两代人的时间里,几乎可以毫不费力地融入美国社会。

In some ways, the situation of European immigrants was like that of a minority ethnic group. The difference lay in the fact that although most second- and third-generation individuals from ethnic groups were still set apart and considered unassimilable no matter how Americanized they became, those from the Caucasian nationality groups had little trouble, in a generation or two, in identifying as a part of American society.

移民限制1890年之前,大多数移民美国的人都来自西北欧。后来,来自南欧和东欧的移民开始增多,墨西哥移民也开始增加。许多“老”美国人,甚至一些早期移民,都对南欧和东欧人抱有强烈的偏见。对限制性立法的呼声最终导致了限制移民的法律的出台。

Restrictions on Immigration Until 1890, most immigrants to the United States were from northwestern Europe. Then immigration from southern and eastern Europe began to grow, and Mexican immigration also increased. Many “old” Americans, and even some of the earlier immigrants, were strongly prejudiced against southern and eastern Europeans. Demands for restrictive legislation led to laws limiting immigration.

1921年,第一部《移民配额法案》获得通过,旨在将每个国家群体的移民数量限制在规定的年度配额内。每个国家的配额为3%。1910年,居住在美国的拥有该民族血统的人数占总人口的1%。这项立法导致来自中欧、东欧和南欧国家的移民数量急剧减少。后来,配额有所减少,1924年,每年可接纳的移民总数上限降至15万人。配额法不适用于西半球国家。

In 1921, the first Immigration Quota Act, designed to reduce immigration to specified annual quotas for each national group, was passed. The quota for each country was 3 percent of the number of people living in the United States in 1910 who were of that national origin. The effect of this legislation was a sharp reduction in immigration from the countries of central, eastern, and southern Europe. Later, the quotas were reduced, and in 1924 the maximum total number of immigrants to be admitted annually was cut to 150,000. The quota laws did not apply to countries in the Western hemisphere.

无证移民有时会在试图潜入美国时丧命。 © Norma Jean Gargasz/Alamy Stock Photo

Undocumented immigrants sometimes die during their attempts to sneak into the United States. © Norma Jean Gargasz/Alamy Stock Photo

二战后,美国国会通过了多项移民法案,接纳了数量远超配额的大量移民。这些移民大多是因二战或1956年匈牙利反共产主义起义而流离失所的欧洲人。后来,正如我们之前提到的,古巴和亚洲难民也根据特殊立法获得接纳。

During the years following World War II, Congress passed various immigration acts to admit considerable numbers of immigrants over and above the quotas. Most of these were Europeans displaced from their homes by World War II or by the 1956 Hungarian rebellion against communist rule. Later, as we have already mentioned, Cuban and Asian refugees were admitted under special legislation.

但在1965年,迫于那些认为我们的移民法带有歧视性的人的压力,国会通过了一项法案,规定在1968年中期彻底取消国家配额制。根据该法案,移民的准入不再基于国籍,而是基于美国对潜在移民的培训或技能的需求。自1965年以来,针对古巴人、东南亚人、爱尔兰人和政治难民等群体的各种特殊移民法相继通过。此外,许多类别的移民不受任何数量限制,例如美国公民的直系亲属。移民构成的变化可以从图13.1中看出。

But in 1965, under pressure from people who considered our immigration laws discriminatory, Congress passed an act that provided for the complete abandonment of national quotas by mid-1968. Under this act, admittance is based not on national origin but on the US need for the training or skills of a would-be immigrant. Various special immigration laws applying to groups such as Cubans, Southeast Asians, Irish, and political refugees have been passed since 1965. In addition, many classes of immigrants are exempt from any numerical limitations— such as immediate relatives of US citizens. The change in the composition of immigration can be seen in Figure 13.1.

1989年,美国再次修改配额,削减亚裔移民数量,增加前苏联社会主义共和国的移民数量。这些举措引发了政治动荡。1990年,美国国会彻底修改了移民法,将移民配额提高了近50%,并允许更大比例的非美国公民亲属移民入境。此外,国会还为所有出身的富裕外国人(只要保证在美国投资至少100万美元)提供了3万个名额。这引发了美国出售美国公民身份的指控。

In 1989, the United States again changed the quotas, cutting the number of Asians allowed and increasing the number of people from the former Soviet Socialist Republics. These actions created a political stir. In 1990, Congress overhauled the immigration laws, raising the quota of immigrants by nearly 50 percent and allowing entry for a larger percentage of immigrants who were not related to US citizens. It also created 30,000 slots for wealthy foreigners of any origin who would guarantee that they would invest at least $1 million in the United States. This led to charges that the United States was selling US citizenship.

1997年,《非法移民改革与移民责任法》生效。该法案大幅放宽了美国公民或合法居民担保潜在移民的条件,使获得永久居留权比旧法更加困难。此外,该法案还提高了移民必须满足的各种正式证明的要求,例如出生和结婚证明。这项立法使移民更难遵守法律规定的程序,并要求雇主在为移民提供工作之前进行调查。

In 1997, the Illegal Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act went into effect. It substantially deliberalizes the conditions under which a US citizen or legal resident can sponsor a would-be immigrant and makes permanent residency much harder to achieve than under the older laws. It also increases the requirements for various formal certificates, such as birth and marriage, that an immigrant has to meet. This legislation makes it harder for immigrants to comply with the formalities of the law, and directs employers to investigate before giving a job to an immigrant.

特朗普政府执政期间,曾试图改变现行的移民制度,即每年进入美国的合法移民大多是已在美国定居的移民的家庭成员。特朗普总统将这种程序称为“连锁移民”,即合法移民在获得公民身份后,可以申请将其直系亲属带到美国,并认为这种做法并没有将“最优秀”的移民带到美国。相反,他试图创建一个择优移民制度,在该制度下,大多数移民将被视为对社会具有高价值的人,例如医生、工程师和技术开发人员。乔·拜登在2020年大选中获胜后,这一努力被放弃了。

During its time in office the Trump administration attempted to move away from the immigration system in which a majority of legal immigrants entering the United States every year are family members of immigrants who have already established themselves here. President Trump called this process, whereby legal immigrants can apply to bring their immediate family members to the United States after they themselves have received citizenship, “chain migration,” and argued that it is not bringing the “best” immigrants to the United States. Instead, he attempted to create a merit-based immigration system, in which a majority of immigrants would be people deemed to be of high value to our society, such as doctors, engineers, and technology developers. When Joe Biden won the election in 2020, that push was abandoned.

我们的移民法有效性一直受到质疑,尤其考虑到其中一些法律似乎与其他法律相冲突。首先,这些法律的适用和执行并不一致:个人或小团体可以而且确实被利用。其次,控制我国漫长的南北边境以及海上通道(更不用说诸如跳伞之类的奇特手段)的非法入境,对于现有当局来说是一项艰巨的任务。即使是合法入境也难以执行,因为对学生和其他访客的监控不足,无法确保他们遵守签证限制或未逾期逗留。

The effectiveness of our immigration laws, especially when we consider that some seem to conflict with others, has been questioned. First, their application and enforcement have not been consistent: Leverage can and has been exerted for individuals or small groups. Second, the crucial task of controlling illegal entry along our long northern and southern borders and the approaches by sea (not to mention exotic tactics, such as parachuting) is a formidable one for the available authorities. Even legal admissions are difficult to enforce because there is insufficient monitoring of students and other visitors to see that they comply with the restrictions of their visas or do not outstay their permissions.

图 13.1 1820年至2020年各大洲合法移民数量。1990年的大幅增长是由于大量墨西哥移民获得合法身份(时间轴上后期年份被延长,以便于查看近期变化)。(来源:美国人口普查局,《美国统计摘要》;《移民统计年鉴》)

Figure 13.1 Legal immigrants by continent, 1820 to 2020. The large jump in 1990 is due to the legalization of many Mexican immigrants (later years on the time axis are extended for easier viewing of recent changes). (Source: US Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States; Yearbook of Immigration Statistics)

处理非法移民问题截至 2020 年,美国约有 1000 万非法移民,略低于 2007 年的峰值。下降的原因是 2008 年至 2012 年的经济衰退、限制雇用非法工人的法律,以及特朗普阻止非法移民的政策。约 40% 的非法移民合法入境,但签证过期;其余主要是非法移民。这 1200 万不包括 1986 年美国通过立法对新非法移民施加更多限制时纳入人口的移民,同时该立法规定使当时已在美国非法居住和工作的 270 万外国人中的一部分人的身份合法化。这项法律使一大批以前非法的外国人合法化,但也使雇主因雇用非法外国人而受到处罚。图 13.1明显地表明了墨西哥入籍公民数量的一次性大幅增长。

Dealing With Unauthorized Immigrants As of2020 there were about ten million undocumented aliens living in the United States, a number somewhat lower than its peak in 2007. The decline was due to the recession of 2008-2012 and laws that have limited the hiring of undocumented workers, and to Trump policies to discourage illegal immigration. About 40 percent of undocumented immigrants have entered the country legally but outstayed their visas; the others primarily are unauthorized Mexicans. This twelve million does not include those immigrants folded into the population when, in 1986, the United States passed legislation imposing more restrictions on new illegal immigration while at the same time making provisions for legitimizing the status of some of the 2.7 million aliens already illegally living and working in the United States at that time. This law legalized a large group of formerly undocumented aliens, but also made employers subject to penalties for employing illegal aliens. The resulting large one-time jump in the number of naturalized citizens from Mexico is evident in Figure 13.1.

1986年的法律收效有限。该法律通过后,墨西哥非法移民数量最初保持不变。然而,由于美国对低薪工人的需求旺盛,非法移民数量随后开始增加,并一直持续到2007年经济衰退。特朗普总统的当选及其政策将移民问题推到了政治风口浪尖。奥巴马总统此前发布了一项行政命令,名为“童年入境暂缓遣返令”(DACA),指示官员不得对非法入境且已在美国长期居留的儿童执行移民法,并向他们提供临时工作许可和免于被驱逐出境的保护。特朗普于2017年9月终止了该计划,并告知国会,他们必须通过立法延长DACA。这引发了政治以及法律斗争,这些斗争可能会持续数年。与此同时,DACA移民被允许工作和居留,但他们面临着巨大的不确定性。随着拜登总统在2020年当选,美国移民政策发生了变化,越来越多的人非法越境。许多人一到美国就向美国政府自首,然后被释放等待审判。许多获释者潜入美国,增加了无证移民的数量。这鼓励了更多的非法移民。我们可以预见,未来几年将再次尝试建立一个合理的无证移民合法化计划。

The 1986 law had limited success. After the passage of the law, illegal Mexican immigration initially held constant. However, then it started increasing, and it increased until the 2007 recession, as the demand for low-wage workers in the United States was high. President Trump’s election and policies brought immigration to the forefront of politics. President Obama had issued an Executive Order, called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Order that directed officials not to enforce immigration laws for children brought here illegally and had been here for a long time, and to offer them temporary work permits and protection from deportation. Trump ended the program in September 2017 and told Congress that they would have to pass legislation to extend DACA. This led to political and legal fights, which will likely continue for years. In the meantime DACA immigrants are allowed to work and stay, but they face significant uncertainty. With President Biden’s election in 2020, US immigration policy changed, and more people crossed the border illegally. Once in the United States many turned themselves over to the US government and were then released pending trial. Many of those released blended into the US, increasing the number of undocumented individuals. This encouraged more illegal immigration. We can expect renewed attempts to establish a reasonable program of legalization of undocumented immigrants in the coming years.

宗教少数派

Religious Minorities

美国有许多宗教团体,其信仰引领他们遵循与美国文化普遍模式略有不同的生活方式。这些教派包括阿米什派、基督复临安息日会和耶和华见证人等。但其成员总数并不多。摩门教一度也曾被纳入其中,但自从摩门教正式放弃一夫多妻制后,其与美国文化的关系就变得与其他基督教派别并无太大区别。

A number of religious groups in this country espouse beliefs that lead them to follow ways of life somewhat different from the general pattern of US culture. These include sects such as the Amish, the Seventh-Day Adventists, and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. But their total number is small. At one time, Mormons could have been included, but after they officially abandoned polygamy, they became, in their relation to US culture, not very different from any other Christian sect.

然而,犹太人构成了一个重要的少数群体,其对我们社会的影响远大于其数量本身所体现的影响力。我们已经在第九章探讨过犹太教的本质,但在此我们将简要讨论一下反犹主义。针对犹太人的偏见或严重歧视,即所谓的反犹主义,已经存在了几个世纪,并且在某些国家和某些时期尤为严重。有时,它与宗教有关;有时,它被合理化,因为大多数人厌恶某些文化或“种族”特征,而这些特征大多是虚构的,被赋予了犹太人群体。在东欧某些地区,反犹主义有时发展到极端,以至于成千上万的犹太人被杀害,例如沙皇俄国发生的大屠杀(或有组织的屠杀)。但反犹主义在纳粹德国达到了顶峰,因为在阿道夫·希特勒的集中营中被杀害的超过一千万人中,犹太人占了六百万。

Jews, however, form an important minority group whose influence on our society is greater than their numbers alone would seem to indicate. We have already considered the nature of Judaism in Chapter 9, but we will take up here a brief discussion of anti-Semitism. Prejudice or severe discrimination against Jews, called anti-Semitism, has existed for centuries and has been very strong in certain countries at certain periods. Sometimes it has been tied to religion; sometimes it has been rationalized by dislike on the part of the majority of the population for certain cultural or “racial” characteristics, largely imaginary, attributed to Jews as a group. In some parts of eastern Europe, anti-Semitism has at times been taken to such extremes that thousands of Jews were killed, as in the pogroms, or organized massacres, that occurred in czarist Russia. But it was in Nazi Germany that anti-Semitism reached its height, for Jews constituted six million of the more than ten million people who were murdered in Adolf Hitler’s concentration camps.

反犹主义仍然存在,尽管在美国它已逐渐减弱,或许部分原因是它被更大的黑白关系问题所掩盖。但近年来,一些犹太人感到偏见正在加剧。造成这种情况的原因可能有两个。首先,当新国家以色列成立并与阿拉伯人发生冲突时,大多数犹太人因自豪感而团结起来,许多人全力支持以色列。但非犹太人往往不认同他们的观点。其次,随着黑人对平等的要求不断提高,其中一些人倾向于将黑人区犹太商人视为白人压迫的象征。

Anti-Semitism continues to exist, although in the United States it has slowly diminished, perhaps in part because it was overshadowed by the greater problem of black-white relations. But in recent years, some Jews have felt that the level of prejudice was rising. Two factors may have contributed to this. First, when the new nation of Israel was established and conflict with the Arabs began, the majority of Jews were drawn together by a sense of pride, and many gave their full support to Israel. Often non-Jews do not share their sentiments. Second, as blacks have increased their demands for equality, some of them have tended to identify the Jewish merchant in the black ghetto as the symbol of white oppression.

2016年大选前夕,自称“另类右翼”的保守主义运动蓬勃发展,导致美国反犹言论死灰复燃。受唐纳德·特朗普总统竞选成功的鼓舞,另类右翼运动人士开始更大规模地传播其反犹观点,导致白人至上主义者举行集会,甚至在2016年11月特朗普赢得大选后的几天内,犹太人墓地遭到破坏。

Leading up to the 2016 election, the growth of the conservative movement calling itself the “alt-right” led to a resurgence of anti-Semitic rhetoric in the United States. Energized by the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, the people of the alt-right movement began making their anti-Semitic views known on a larger scale, resulting in white supremacist rallies and even the vandalism of Jewish graveyards in the days after Trump won the election in November 2016.

尽管有这些发展,但没有明显证据表明整个国家的反犹主义正在抬头。长期趋势似乎正朝着相反的方向发展。异族通婚似乎越来越普遍,尽管根据近年来的民意调查,犹太人对此的反对程度有所波动。大多数声称信奉犹太教的人本身就是犹太人,但犹太教越来越成为一种文化分类,而非种族分类。因此,犹太人的种族构成可能越来越不集中,但这并不一定意味着犹太性本身也会被淡化。相反,由于犹太文化认同并不依赖于犹太种族认同,因此尽管存在异族通婚等趋势,犹太人不太可能在短期内失去其作为一个独立文化群体的身份。

In spite of such developments there is no clear evidence that in the country as a whole anti-Semitism is increasing. The long-term trend appears to be in the other direction. Intermarriage seems to be more and more common, although, according to polls taken in recent years, Jewish opposition to it has fluctuated. The majority of people claiming Judaism as their religion are ethnically Jewish, but Judaism has come more and more to denote a cultural classification as opposed to a racial one. Thus, as the ethnic composition of Jewish people may become less and less concentrated, this does not necessarily mean that Jewishness itself will become diluted as well. On the contrary, because Jewish cultural identity is not dependent upon Jewish ethnic identity, it is unlikely that Jews will lose their identity as a separate cultural group any time soon, despite trends such as intermarriage.

另一个遭受歧视的宗教少数群体是穆斯林群体。虽然我们之前讨论过针对部分穆斯林的歧视,但重要的是要记住,并非所有阿拉伯人都是穆斯林,也并非所有穆斯林都是阿拉伯人。穆斯林人口估计约为350万,种族构成多元,其中只有约12.5%为阿拉伯裔。很大一部分穆斯林也是黑人;他们占美国穆斯林总数的40%以上。其次是南亚裔,约占25%。穆斯林在美国各州都能找到恐怖分子,其中加利福尼亚州和纽约州数量最多。自2001年以来,许多美国公民将伊斯兰教(穆斯林的宗教)与恐怖主义联系起来,尽管穆斯林中只有极少数是恐怖分子。但近年来,穆斯林却常常因涉嫌恐怖主义而被定罪。

Another religious minority that has been experiencing discrimination is the Muslim population. Although we discussed discrimination against some Muslims earlier, it is important to remember that not all Arabs are Muslims and not all Muslims are Arabs. The Muslim population, estimated to be about three and a half million, is diverse, with only about 12.5 percent ethnically Arab. A large percentage of Muslims are also black; they make up over 40 percent of all US Muslims. The next largest percentage is South Asians at about 25 percent. Muslims can be found in every state, with the largest numbers in California and New York. Since 2001, many US citizens have associated Islam (the religion of Muslims) with terrorism, even though only a minuscule percentage of Muslims are terrorists. But all too often in recent times, Muslims are judged guilty by association.

美国一直在努力应对歧视穆斯林问题的一个例子是特朗普总统的旅行禁令。这项旅行禁令最初于2017年初特朗普总统就任之初实施,旨在通过禁止来自被视为恐怖主义源头国家的个人入境,减少恐怖主义对美国的威胁。这项禁令几乎立即在联邦法院被否决,因为一名法官认为,由于所有受旅行禁令影响的国家都以穆斯林为主,因此构成了对穆斯林的歧视。特朗普随后修改了旅行禁令,将一些非穆斯林国家纳入其中,修订后的旅行禁令也获得了法院批准。

An example of an issue that the United States has grappled with regarding discrimination against Muslims is President Trump’s travel ban. Initially implemented in the first days of his presidency in early 2017, Trumps travel ban aimed to reduce the threat that terrorism posed to the United States by prohibiting entry to individuals coming from countries deemed to be sources of terrorism. The first ban was almost immediately blocked in federal court, because a judge deemed it to discriminate against Muslims since all the countries under the travel ban were majority Muslim. Trump then modified the travel ban so that it included some non-Muslim countries, and the revised travel ban met court approval.

尽管美国存在基于宗教的歧视,但与许多其他国家相比,美国的记录相当良好。在中国,基督徒会遭受政府迫害。在一些伊斯兰国家,迫害甚至更为严重。例如,在伊朗,从伊斯兰教改信其他宗教的人可能被判处死刑。

Although discrimination on the basis of religion exists in the United States, relative to many other countries, the United States has a fairly good record. In China, a Christian is subject to persecution by the state. Even more severe persecution occurs in some Islamic countries. In Iran, for example, a person who converts from Islam to another religion may be subject to the death penalty.

女性

Women

在当今社会,男女的角色有所不同:女性在某些方面处于从属地位。因此,尽管女性在美国人口中占大多数,但鉴于这种从属地位,她们仍然常常被称为少数群体。这种从属地位是否可接受,取决于我们每个人的决定,但在做出决定时,我们必须了解事实。

In today’s society, the roles of men and women differ: Women are in some ways subordinated to men. Thus, although women make up a majority of the US population, given this subordinate position, they still are often referred to as a minority. Whether this subordinate position is acceptable is up to each one of us to decide, but in making that decision, we must be aware of the facts.

事实是,我们的社会已认定,基于性别、年龄、种族或国籍的歧视在法律上是不允许的。尽管有法律规定,但对女性的歧视仍然存在。这种歧视有多种形式。有时它被伪装成保护:女性不被允许做某些事情,因为她们被视为弱势性别;禁止女性在几乎所有武装部队中服役就是一个例子,直到最近才结束。其他时候,歧视根植于男性对待女性的方式——将女性视为物品而不是人;大多数色情作品就是一个很好的例子。还有一些时候,歧视体现在女性的就业机会上:公司对女性能力的看法往往与实际情况不符。这样的例子不胜枚举。我们无法提供各种歧视行为的完整清单,部分原因是篇幅有限,部分原因是每个人对歧视的看法各不相同。

One fact is that our society has decided that discrimination is not legally allowed on the basis of sex, age, ethnicity, or national origin. Despite the law, there is still discrimination against women. This discrimination takes many forms. Sometimes it is disguised as protection: Women are not allowed to do things because they are perceived as the weaker sex; the prohibition against women serving in combat in almost all of the armed forces was an example that only recently ended. Other times, the discrimination is built into the way men treat women— as objects rather than as human beings; most pornography is a good example. Still other times the discrimination is in womens access to jobs: The perception that firms have of women’s abilities often differs from the reality. The list goes on. We cannot provide a comprehensive list of the various practices of discrimination, partly because our space is limited and partly because the perception of discrimination varies from individual to individual.

色情作品将女性视为物品。 © Everett Collection, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo

Pornography treating women as objects. © Everett Collection, Inc./Alamy Stock Photo

为了应对这种复杂而微妙的歧视,许多人支持了一项宪法修正案——《平等权利修正案》 (ERA)。该修正案简洁明了地规定:“法律面前人人平等的权利,不得因性别而遭到否认或剥夺。” 该修正案需要四分之三的州批准,但最终未能获得批准。支持者指出,否决该修正案的州议会以及所有州议会的议员绝大多数都由男性组成。(但这不应掩盖女性在ERA被否决中发挥了关键作用的事实,许多保守的女性声音帮助说服了这些州议员,批准该修正案并不符合女性的最佳利益。)

To deal with this complex, subtle discrimination, many people supported a constitutional amendment, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which stated simply: “Equality of rights under the laws shall not be denied or abridged ... on account of sex.” It needed ratification by threefourths of the states, which it did not receive. Supporters point out that the state legislatures that defeated this amendment, and all state legislatures, were overwhelmingly staffed by males. (This should not overshadow the fact that women played a key role in the defeat of the ERA, with many conservative female voices helping to convince those state legislators that it was not in women’s best interests for the amendment to be ratified.)

妇女运动史妇女运动,有时也被称为女权主义,是一种对性别平等的信仰,其起源至少可以追溯到19世纪初。19世纪末20世纪初,妇女参政运动继续其工作。在妇女运动中,以争取投票权为主要目标的女性被称为妇女参政论者。她们在1920年赢得了这场运动。在第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战期间,女性被要求承担许多在男性被征召入伍之前分配给男性的任务,例如在工厂工作。许多女性很享受她们的新角色。她们发现,仅仅因为战争结束、男人们回家就放弃自己赢得的自由,这很困难,甚至荒谬。但是,随着从电影《铆工罗西》中可以看到,政府对女性施加了强大的压力,让她们恢复所谓的家庭正当角色,并将工作交给男性。

History of the Women's Movement We can trace the women’s movement, sometimes called feminism, a belief in the equality of the sexes, at least as far back as the early nineteenth century. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the suffragist movement continued its work. Women whose primary aim in the women’s movement was to win the right to vote were called suffragettes. The women won this campaign in 1920. During World Wars I and II, women were called on to assume many of the tasks that had been assigned to men until the men were called into military service, such as working in factories, and many women enjoyed their new role. They found it difficult and, indeed, absurd to give up the freedoms they had won just because the wars ended and the men came home. But, as can be seen in the movie Rosie the Riveter, the government exerted strong pressure on women to resume their so-called proper role at home and to give up their jobs to men.

纪念女性在第一次世界大战中贡献的主要永久成就是美国宪法第十九修正案(1920年)的通过,该修正案赋予了女性投票权。第二次世界大战期间,女性在平民经济中的表现以及她们在军队中的实际服役,使她们有信心主张更大的平等。她们在海湾战争中发挥了至关重要的作用,之后国会通过了一项法律,授权女飞行员参战。在最近的伊拉克战争中,女性光荣地服役,也有一些女性被俘并被关押为战俘。然而,军队远非性别中立。即使不考虑彻头彻尾的歧视,大约五分之一的女性在军队中遭受过性侵犯,80%的女性遭受过性骚扰。此外,所有男性都必须在义务兵役制度(Selective Service System)中登记,因此如有需要,她们可以被征召入伍。截至2021年,女性无需登记,也不能被征召入伍。

The principal permanent achievement marking women’s contributions in World War I is the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the US Constitution (1920), which gave them the right to vote. During World War II, women’s performance in the civilian economy and their actual service in the armed forces gave them confidence to assert claims for greater equality. They played vital roles in the Persian Gulf War, after which Congress passed a law authorizing women pilots to take part in combat. In the latest Iraq war, women served honorably in combat roles, and women were captured and held as prisoners of war. Still, the army is far from sex neutral. Even disregarding outright discrimination, approximately one in five women in the armed forces have been sexually assaulted and 80 percent have been sexually harassed. Additionally, all men are required to sign up with the Selective Service System and thus may be drafted should the need arise. As of 2021, women were not required to sign up and cannot be drafted.

过去几十年,女性在许多领域取得了显著进步。如今,更多女性从事着薪酬更高的工作:在大学和研究生院、政府部门、企业董事会、金融机构的高层职位以及医学、法律和工程等行业,女性人数都在增加。然而,如果我们更仔细地审视记录,就会发现在许多领域,这些进步似乎对促进平等总体效果甚微。例如,只有20%到25%的州议员是女性。2022年,435名众议院议员中只有120名女性,参议员中也只有24名女性。因此,立法者和执法者主要都是男性。

Over the past decades, women have made significant gains in many areas. There are now more women in better-paying jobs: more women in colleges and graduate schools, in government offices, in corporate boardrooms, in the highest-ranking positions of financial institutions, and in professions such as medicine, the law, and engineering. Yet when we examine the record more closely, in many areas these gains seem to have had little overall effect on equality. For example, only 20 to 25 percent of state legislators are female. In 2022, only 120 out of the 435 members of the House of Representatives were women, and there were only 24 female senators. Thus, primarily men are both the lawmakers and the law enforcers.

即使从事同等工作,女性的平均收入仍然低于男性。在管理层,女性通常只能晋升到中层管理职位,而且她们往往就此止步。许多女性往往被划分到“粉领”工作,例如教师、护理和图书馆工作,这些工作的薪水低于白领工作。女性经常被迫从事本来就薪水较低的工作,这一事实是造成部分工资差距的原因之一,而这种差距并非源于女性与男性做同样的工作却明显获得更低的报酬。女性收入往往较低的其他原因是,由于产假和家庭事务,她们平均工作时间不如男性,而且她们往往因为被认为能力较差和/或对工作的投入程度不如男性而被选中担任更好的职位。 2017年一项针对丹麦女性的研究发现,丹麦女性的低薪几乎全部与女性生育后选择退出职场密切相关,而没有生育的丹麦女性的薪酬与男性持平。要了解女性与男性收入的比较,请参见表13.2

The average earnings of a woman are still less than the average for a man, even when equal work is performed. At managerial levels, women usually rise only to middle-management jobs, and they tend to stay there. Many women tend to be segregated into “pink-collar jobs” such as teaching, nursing, and library work, which pay less than white-collar jobs. The fact that women are often pushed toward jobs that are inherently lower-paid is one of the explanations for the portion of the wage gap that is not due to women blatantly being paid less to do the same work as men. Other reasons why womens income tends to be lower is that they, on average, do not work as many hours as men due to maternity leave and keeping a household, and that they simply are not chosen for better positions because they are perceived to be less capable and/or less committed to the job than male candidates. A 2017 study of Danish women found that almost all the lower pay Danish women received was highly correlated with women’s choice to withdraw from the workplace after they had children, and that Danish women without children had pay equal to men. To see how womens earnings compare with those of men, see Table 13.2.

此外,由于女性进入建筑、消防和警察等行业的时间相对较短,她们往往是最后被录用、最先被解雇的。这些行为在个人或公司层面上并不一定具有歧视性。例如,许多公司建立了资历制度来规范其招聘和解雇。因此,该制度要求公司解雇最后入职的员工,而女性员工占比较大。就粉领工作而言,学校、医院、博物馆和图书馆……

In addition, as women have comparatively recently entered occupations such as construction work, firefighting, and police forces, they tend to be the last hired and the first fired. None of these acts is necessarily discriminating on the individual or firm level. For example, many companies have established a seniority system that governs their hiring and firing. Thus, they are required by the system to fire the last one hired, of which women constitute a larger percentage. With respect to pink-collar jobs, the schools, hospitals, museums, and libraries that

表 13.2 2020 年男性和女性各职业收入
2017年各类全职工作者的每周平均收入(美元)
职业 男性 女性
管理、专业及相关 1,578 1,164
办公室和行政支持 868 756
服务 704 574
农业、渔业和林业 608 528
安装、维护和维修 991 801
生产 796 614
资料来源:劳工统计局。

提供这些职位的机构表示,他们只是从申请者中招聘,并没有要求女性接受这些工作。

offer these positions say they merely hire from the pool of those who apply and that they are not directing women to take the jobs.

很多性别歧视出现得太早,太过隐蔽,根植于体制之中,很难归咎于具体个人。如果你在班里做个民意调查,你可能会发现男性的职业抱负比女性更高。为什么呢?

Much of the gender discrimination occurs too early and is too subtle and built into the system to attribute to specific individuals. If you take a poll in your class, you would likely find that the men have higher career aspirations than the women. Why?

或许在童年时期,男孩承受的压力更大;他们被明确告知,最终要对自己的人生负责。当女孩在完成项目方面遇到困难时,她可能会得到宽容的对待。又或许,职业顾问会引导女孩走与男孩不同的道路。比如说,一位才华横溢的数学家和全优生,可能会被建议去学习教育课程,而不是去商学院、金融学院或国际关系学院。如果对教学感到失望,她可能会离开教学岗位,结婚生子。她做出这个决定并不意味着她不快乐,或者她的生活没有那么充实(或许更充实),但这确实展现了女性被引导进入特定职业的过程。

It might be that in childhood the boys were pressured harder; it was made clear to them that they would be ultimately responsible for their own lives. When a girl had difficulty completing a project, she might have been treated leniently. Or it might have been a career counselor who guided girls in a different direction from boys. A woman who was, say, a brilliant mathematician and a straight-A student might have been counseled into education courses rather than to professional schools of business, finance, or international relations. Frustrated with teaching, she might leave that occupation to marry and have children. The fact that she made that decision does not mean she is unhappy or that her life is any less fulfilling (it may be more), but it does show the process by which women are channeled into certain careers.

女性进入职场的原因前国会女议员帕特里夏·施罗德指出,女性进入职场最重要的原因之一是她们必须维持家庭生计。许多家庭妇女工作是因为她们必须工作。而对另一些女性来说,虽然家庭规模变小了,但她们的需求却变大了。因此,对一些女性来说,工作并非实际的必需品,而是一种社会需求:它是家庭满足自身需求的一种方式。然而,对黑人和其他少数族裔女性来说,工作作为必需品的历史比白人女性要长得多。

Reasons for Women Entering the Workforce Former Congresswoman Patricia Schroeder pinpointed one of the most important reasons for women to enter the workforce when she argued that the primary reason they do so in such unprecedented numbers is that they have to maintain their families. Many family women work because they must work. For others, although families have become smaller, wants have become larger. Therefore, for some women, work is not an actual necessity but rather a social need: It is a way the family can meet its desires. However, for black and other minority females, work has been a necessity for much longer than for white females.

劳动力女性占劳动年龄女性总数的比例从1972年的32%上升到21世纪初的60%以上。随后,这一比例开始略有下降,到2022年约为58%。根据美国人口普查局的数据,在有18岁以下子女的双亲家庭中,约有60%的父母双方都在工作。(这一比例在1976年为33%。)

Women in the workforce as a percentage of total women of working age rose from 32 percent in 1972 to over 60 percent in the early 2000s. Then it started decreasing slightly, and in 2022 that percentage was about 58 percent. According to the Census Bureau about 60% percent of two-parent families with children under age eighteen had both parents working. (This percentage had risen from 33 percent in 1976.)

有时有人会认为,对许多女性来说,工作的决定不如男性重要,因为她们工作只是为了提供“额外收入”,通常被列为第二辆车、度假屋、餐厅用餐——这些可能被视为轻浮或自我放纵的东西。如果真是这样,那么女性的工资就可以更低,因为她们的收入并非必需,而且她们对劳动力的依恋也是断断续续的。另一些人则认为这种说法是错误的,理由有二。首先,

It is sometimes argued that for many women the decision to work is not as important as that for men because they work only to provide “extras,” often listed as a second car, a vacation home, restaurant meals—items that can be seen as frivolous or self-indulgent. If this is so, then women can be paid less because their earnings are not essential and their attachment to the labor force is intermittent. Others claim that this argument is wrong for two reasons. First,

越来越多的女性从事“男性”的工作。 © MBI/Alamy Stock Photo

More and more women are doing “male”jobs. © MBI/Alamy Stock Photo

并非所有女性都是夫妻中的一方。她们的收入需求与男性一样大,甚至更大。但更重要的是,这种说法是错误的,因为为同一工作支付给一个人比另一个人更少的报酬既不道德,也不合法。

not all women are one-half of a couple. Their need for income is as great as, or greater than, a man’s. But, more important, the argument is wrong because it is both immoral and illegal to pay one individual less than another individual for the same work.

家庭破裂对女性的影响最为显著。对于那些没有父亲与其同住的女性及其子女来说,前景不容乐观——许多缺席的父亲不支付任何子女抚养费,或者支付的金额远低于法院判决的数额。过去三十年,一些法律的通过改善了这种情况。例如,1984年,国会允许在某些情况下扣押工资;1991年,一项联邦法律获得通过,授权对所有未履行子女抚养义务的缺席父母实施工资扣押。随后,联邦法律的调整规定了额外的措施,例如要求雇主必须将新聘用的员工报告给国家数据库,以查明其中是否有人拖欠子女抚养费。但对于大多数单亲父母(通常是女性)来说,追讨抚养费仍然困难重重。

The breakdown of the family has had its most telling impact on women. The outlook for women and their children who do not have the child’s father living with them is not bright—many absent fathers make no child support payments, or do so at a level substantially lower than the amounts ordered by the court. In the last thirty years, laws have been passed to improve the situation. For example, in 1984 Congress allowed attachment of wages in certain cases, and in 1991 a federal law authorizing wage attachment for all absent parents who did not live up to their child support obligations was passed. Subsequent adjustments to federal law have mandated additional measures such as that employers must report newly hired employees to a national data bank to find out whether any of them owe child support payments. But it is still difficult for most single parents (generally women) to collect.

离婚女性的处境同样岌岌可危。有人说,对女性来说,离婚是通往贫困的最可靠途径。许多本应获得赡养费的女性往往得不到,因为许多本应支付赡养费的男性拖欠了赡养费(平心而论,有些男性根本无法满足这些经济需求)。将子女监护权交给女性的倾向依然盛行,因为人们认为女性天生更擅长照顾孩子,尽管最近法官们越来越多地将监护权判给父亲共同抚养或单独抚养。由于大多数女性的收入低于男性,离婚女性抚养子女的经济负担可能非常沉重。

The situation for divorced women is also precarious. It has been said that for a woman the surest road to poverty is divorce. Numerous women who should receive alimony payments often do not, as many men who are supposed to make these payments default (some, in all fairness, cannot meet these financial demands). The tendency to give child custody to women still prevails, because women are perceived as being naturally better caretakers, although recently judges have more often been awarding custody either jointly or solely to the father. Because most women earn less than men, the financial burden of a divorced woman with children can be overwhelming.

我们一直说,女性工作的原因与男性相同:为了谋生和养家糊口。但女性渴望工作还有其他一些原因,这些原因与男性相同:自我实现和个人满足。除了看到自己的劳动获得金钱回报(无论我们对金钱的理解如何,金钱是我们社会中奖励的象征)所带来的基本满足感之外,女性还希望接受竞争的挑战,学习和运用新技能,与同行交流,并为项目和企业的成功做出贡献。

We have been saying that women work for the same reasons men do: to make a living and provide for their families. But there are other reasons, which women share with men, for their desire to work: self-fulfillment and personal satisfaction. Apart from the basic satisfaction of seeing their work rewarded with money—the symbol of reward in our society, whatever opinion we may have of that symbol—women want to accept the challenges of competition and the acquisition and manipulation of new skills, to associate with peers, and to make contributions to the success of projects and enterprises.

新观念和新环境给家庭和工作带来的变化,让许多男性感到威胁或不便。在传统父权制家庭中长大的男性,有时会对这种堪称社会变革的变革感到困惑和迷茫。

Many men feel threatened or inconvenienced by the changes at home and at work caused by new attitudes and conditions. Men who were raised by traditional patriarchal fathers are sometimes baffled and confused by what has amounted to a kind of social revolution.

然而,妇女运动也对男性产生了一些积极的影响。大量男性,无论已婚还是离婚,都成为了全职爸爸,承担起家务和照顾孩子的重担,并在与孩子更亲近的过程中找到了新的乐趣。尽管许多女性最终仍然承担了更多家务和照顾孩子的责任,但大多数男性开始意识到女性长期以来独自承担的重担和苦差事。相当多的男性发现自己摆脱了那些将他们排除在家庭厨房和育儿室之外,以及在工作场所从事护理和文职工作的古老刻板印象。一些男性开始意识到,平等的责任分配也意味着将男性从“唯一供养家庭和家庭支柱”的超人形象中解放出来,从而减轻他们的压力,并将他们从有害的大男子主义中解放出来。

Yet the women’s movement has affected men in several positive ways. Large numbers of men, either married or divorced, have become stay-at-home dads, taking on household and child care tasks and finding a new joy in being closer to their children. Although many women still end up with a larger share of the housework and the care of the children, men for the most part are beginning to appreciate the burdens and drudgery that women have long handled alone. Significant numbers of men have found themselves liberated from ancient stereotypes that barred them from kitchens and nurseries at home and nursing and clerical work in the workplace. Some men have begun to realize that to equalize duties is also to free males from the superman image of sole provider and family mainstay, reducing their tension and liberating them from toxic masculinity.

并非所有男性都愿意或能够承担起照顾孩子的义务。优质(且价格合理)的日托服务难以获得,尽管一些公司设立了现场日托设施,但这些公司只占极少数。一种解决方案是采用经典的“改变问题”而非“寻找答案”的方法:减少孩子的数量。尤其是在收入高、享受着竞争激烈的商业或职业世界中的刺激的职业女性中,由于诸如照顾孩子之类的不便,​​生育计划被推迟,甚至被明确宣布完全不在她们的计划之内。

Not all men are willing or able to take on the duties of child care. Good (and affordable) day care is hard to come by, and although some firms have established on-site day-care facilities, these companies represent a tiny minority. One solution has been the classic method of changing the problem instead of finding the answer: namely, to reduce the number of children. Especially among professional women earning high incomes and enjoying the exhilaration of the competitive business or professional world, childbearing has been postponed or even specifically declared to be completely outside their plans because of such inconveniences as childcare.

近年来,许多女性发现生育至少一个孩子的愿望越来越强烈,导致35岁至45岁之间母亲生育子女的数量激增,这种趋势有所逆转。这种发展趋势使我们

This tendency has been countered in recent years by a number of women finding that the desire to have at least one child is strong, resulting in an upsurge in the number of children born to mothers between the ages of thirty-five and forty-five. Such a development brings us

循环往复:试图在全职工作的同时兼顾家庭和家人,即使家务事由别人分担,也是一项艰巨的任务,几乎需要一位女超人才能做到。女性越来越质疑自己是否想要这一切。她们可以做到,但她们真的想做吗?

full circle: Trying to work at a full-time job while simultaneously caring for a house and family, even if the family work is shared, is demanding, requiring almost a superwoman to achieve it. Women are increasingly questioning whether they want it all. They can do it, but do they want to do it?

尽管存在诸多问题,女性权利问题仍不会消失——她们在劳动力总量中所占的比例以及她们工作和赚取体面收入的需求不容否认。许多男性仍然不相信,帮助女性克服她们前进道路上的障碍可能对男性有益。然而,一项对女性更加平等的政策很可能使两性都能受益,并且男性和女性都能通过各自不那么传统的角色,找到新的信任、相互尊重和合作的氛围。

Despite the problems, the issue of women’s rights will not disappear—their proportion of the total workforce and their need to work and earn a decent wage cannot be denied. Many men remain unconvinced that helping women surmount the obstacles still in their path will probably be good for men. It is, however, quite possible that both sexes can gain from a more equitable policy toward women and that both men and women can find, through their less traditional roles, a new sense of trust, mutual respect, and cooperation.

基于性取向的歧视 人们也会因为性取向而受到歧视。女同性恋、男同性恋、双性恋和跨性别者群体的成员声称,他们遭受着巨大的歧视,无论是在人们对他们的看法上,还是在找工作方面。例如,直到最近,美国武装部队还有一条规定,所有同性恋者必须退役。美国童子军的案例就是同性性取向者试图通过诉诸法庭来克服歧视的一个例子。当童子军发现一位童子军领队是同性恋后,他们拒绝让他继续从事这项工作。这位领队代表自己和其他同性恋者提起诉讼,但他在上诉的所有法院都败诉了,包括美国最高法院。最高法院于2000年裁定,作为一个私人组织,童子军有权根据性取向将人员排除在外。然而,在2013年,童子军审查了他们的政策,并决定允许男同性恋者加入该组织。

Discrimination Based on Sexual Orientation People are also discriminated against based on sexual orientation. Members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community argue that they experience enormous discrimination, both in the way people think about them and in finding work. For example, until recently the US armed forces had a rule that all homosexuals must resign from the army. An instance in which people with same-sex sexual preferences have tried to overcome discrimination by going to court is the case of the Boy Scouts of America. The Boy Scouts refused to let a scoutmaster continue in that work when they found out he was gay. He sued on his own behalf and on behalf of other gays, but he lost in every court to which he appealed, including the US Supreme Court, which in 2000 decided that as a private organization the Boy Scouts had a right to exclude persons based on their sexual orientation. In 2013, however, the Boy Scouts reviewed their policy and decided to allow gay men to participate in the organization.

为了抵制这种歧视,同性恋者一直在推动制定明确的同性恋权利法和仇恨犯罪法案。一些拟议的同性恋权利法明确禁止基于性取向的歧视,而拟议的仇恨犯罪法案则对反映潜在偏见的犯罪行为处以比正常情况下更严厉的惩罚。最近,一些州通过了同性婚姻合法化的法律,美国最高法院裁定联邦《婚姻保护法》(该法将婚姻定义为一男一女之间的结合)违宪。随着这场斗争的胜利,民权运动的重点转向了影响跨性别者的法律。

To try to counteract that discrimination, gay people have been pushing for explicit gay rights laws and hatecrime bills. Some of the proposed gay rights laws specifically prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and the proposed hate-crime bills make crimes that reflect underlying prejudice subject to stronger than normal penalties. More recently, a number of states passed laws legalizing same-sex marriage, and the US Supreme Court found the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman, unconstitutional. With that battle won, the civil rights focus changed to laws affecting transgendered individuals.

老年人

Senoir Citizens

在我们的社会中,另一个扮演重要角色的特征是年龄。年龄分层的考量必须与我们之前讨论的其他特征略有不同。虽然我们生来就是男性或女性,但衰老的特征对两性而言却是普遍存在的。衰老是不可避免的,而庞塞·德莱昂的青春之泉至今仍是一个传奇。

Another characteristic that plays an important role in our society is age. Age stratification must be considered on a slightly different basis from the other characteristics we have been discussing. Whereas we are born either male or female, the characteristics of aging are universal for both sexes. Aging is inevitable, and Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth remains a legend.

根据年龄进行某种分层是不可避免的。孩童时期,我们无法照顾自己,因此与那些为社会做出贡献的老年人群体格格不入。随着年龄的增长,我们的体能逐渐衰退,无法再像以前那样做所有力所能及的事情,这再次形成了我们与其他群体之间的隔离。然而,从青年到中年再到老年,并没有明确的分界线。生理年龄,即以岁为单位的年龄,通常并不能反映一个人的心理年龄或工作能力以及为社会做出贡献的能力。

Some stratification according to age is inevitable. As children, we are unable to care for ourselves and are thus separated from older age groups who productively contribute to society. As we grow old, our physical abilities decline and we are not able to do all that we once could, again creating a group separate from others. There is, however, no clear demarcation line as we move from youth to middle age to being elderly. Chronological age, or age measured in years, often does not reflect a person’s mental age or capacity to work and contribute to society.

老年人的社会角色:在原始社会,由于医疗体系薄弱以及普遍艰苦的生活方式,很少有人能活到老年。少数活到老年的人被尊崇为信息和智慧的源泉。在现代工业社会,由于科技进步,预期寿命自1900年以来几乎翻了一番,老年人的数量也在迅速增加。由于这些社会高度重视身体的成就、优雅和敏捷,因此衰老所特有的正常体力衰退伴随着老年人地位的下降。有时,人们认为老年工人的产出与其工资不符。尽管雇主歧视老年工人是违反联邦法律的,但企业往往能设法绕过法律,将这些工人解雇。大多数老年人过着积极向上、富有成效的生活,但当他们无法再保持这种状态时,如果负担得起,他们就会选择入住退休社区;或者,如果他们需要大量护理,他们不得不进入养老院,其中一些养老院被称为“死亡候诊室”。

Senior Citizens' Role in Society In primitive societies, few individuals live to an old age because of poor health care systems and their difficult lifestyle in general. The few who do live to old age are venerated as sources of information and wisdom. In modern industrial societies, because of advanced technology, life expectancy has almost doubled since 1900, and the number of elderly are increasing quickly. Because in these societies, great value is placed on physical achievement, grace, and agility, the normal physical slowdown that characterizes aging has been accompanied by decreased status for the elderly. Sometimes the output of senior workers has not been thought to be worth their wages. Even though it is against federal law for employers to discriminate against older workers, businesses often have been successful in finding ways around the law to get rid of these workers. Most of the elderly live productive and active lives, but when they can no longer do so, they have retreated to retirement communities if they can afford them, or, if they need a lot of care, they have had to enter nursing homes, some of which have been described as “waiting rooms for death.”

随着医疗技术的进步,人们对老年人的认知以及老年人的能力也发生了变化。21世纪初,大量老年人健康地活到了八十多岁甚至更老。DNA和基因功能知识的不断积累促进了大量研究,人们甚至预测了预期寿命将出现前所未有的增长,尽管目前这些研究还停留在理论阶段。即使有任何实际成果,也很可能还要几十年后才能实现。但如果能找到“衰老基因”,并找到修改方法,未来几十年预期寿命增长20%或30%并非不可能。

As medical technology has advanced, the perception of what it is to be an older person, and what an older person can do, has changed. In the early 2000s, a significant number of older people were reaching their mid-eighties or older in good health. The proliferation of knowledge about DNA and gene function has fostered so much research that previously unheard-of increases in life expectancy have been predicted, although today the work is highly theoretical. Practical results, if any, are probably decades in the future. But it is not outside the realm of possibility that in the coming decades life expectancy could increase by 20 or 30 percent should the “aging gene” be found and science discover how to modify it.

老年人口比例的增长正如您在图 13.2中看到的,老年人口比例一直在增长。1900 年,总人口中不到 4% 的人年龄在 65 岁或以上。2020 年,老年人口约为 5400 万,约占总人口的 16.7%。预计到 2030 年,老年人口数量将上升到 7000 多万,约占预计人口的 20%。85 岁以上老年人口的增长更为显著。1985 年,85 岁以上的人口有 200 多万;2000 年,有 400 多万,预计到 2050 年,老年人口将达到约 2100 万,约占预计人口的 5%。

The Growth in the Proportion of Senior Citizens As you can see in Figure 13.2, the proportion of the elderly population has been growing. In 1900, less than 4 percent of the total population was sixty-five years of age or older. In 2020, they numbered about fifty-four million, about 16.7 percent of the total population. Projections are that their number will rise to over seventy million by the year 2030, or about 20 percent of the projected population. The growth is more substantial for those over eighty-five. In 1985, there were more than two million people over age eighty-five; in 2000, there were more than four million, and it is projected that by 2050, there will be about twenty-one million, or about 5 percent of the projected population.

老年人口的增长开始引发严重的经济和社会问题。例如,老年人的社会保障福利(包括医疗保险)数额给社会保障体系带来了巨大压力。而且,随着大多数无业老年人相对于年轻、在职缴费者的比例不断上升,越来越少的劳动者将需要赡养越来越多的老年人。这引发了对社会保障基金偿付能力的担忧,也引发了年轻劳动者们的不满。

This growth of the elderly population is beginning to present significant economic and social problems. For instance, the amount of Social Security benefits, including medical insurance payments, for the elderly has placed a strain on the Social Security system, and as the proportion of mostly nonworking elderly grows in relation to the number of younger, working contributors, fewer and fewer workers will be supporting more and more elderly. This causes anxiety about the solvency of the fund and resentment on the part of younger workers.

21世纪初,联邦预算中超过35%的资金用于老年人,预计未来联邦政府在老年人方面的支出将大幅增加。尽管65岁以上的群体经济状况比年轻群体更好,部分原因是他们享有相对丰厚的社会保障福利,部分原因是各种税收优惠。许多年轻劳动者认为,等到他们年老需要领取福利时,社会保障基金就会空空如也;与此同时,他们还要缴纳高额的社会保障税——很多情况下甚至高于他们的所得税负担——有些人对此感到不满。他们质问,为什么要自己为所有这些福利买单。

In the early 2000s, over 35 percent of the federal budget was spent on the elderly, and federal spending on the elderly is projected to rise significantly in the future. This is despite the fact that the over-sixty-five group is financially better off than younger groups, partly because of relatively generous Social Security benefits and partly because of various tax advantages. Many younger workers believe they will find the Social Security fund empty when it is their turn to seek benefits as elderly persons; in the meantime, they are making high Social Security tax payments—in many cases higher than their income tax liability—and some are bitter about this mix. They ask why they should pay for all of these giveaways.

图 13.2常住人口:年龄分布。(来源:美国人口普查局,《美国统计摘要》)

Figure 13.2Resident population: age distribution. (Source: US Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States)

老年人照护问题日益严重,同时,为老年人提供有意义的生活机会也愈发困难。家庭结构的变化加剧了这些问题。随着大家庭的衰落,子女往往无法让父母参与社会活动。此外,出生率下降意味着需要缴纳社会保障金的劳动力减少,需要赡养老人的家庭规模也缩小。这些家庭结构的变化可能会持续下去。多年来,祖父母和曾祖父母在家庭中扮演的角色问题可能会越来越严重。认为祖父母在家庭中的角色值得考虑,并不意味着祖父母应该被视为子女家庭的附属物。总体而言,老年人更喜欢独立生活;但与此同时,与家人和朋友的联系仍然是他们生活中至关重要的一部分。

The problem of care for the elderly is increasing, along with the difficulty of providing older people with opportunities for a meaningful life. These problems have been worsened by changing family structures. With the decline of extended families, children often do not include their parents in social activities. Additionally, declining birthrates mean that there are fewer workers to pay into the social security account and a smaller family to support the elderly. These changing family structures are likely to continue for many years, and, as they do, the problems of finding a role for grandparents and great-grandparents in the family are likely to increase. To argue that a role for grandparents in the family is desirable does not mean that grandparents should be considered an appendage of their childrens family. On the whole, the elderly prefer to live independently; yet at the same time contact with family and friends remains a vital part of their lives.

© Adob​​e

© Adobe

年龄歧视:为了应对老年人面临的问题,老年学界转向政治和社会活动,争取他们作为个人和劳动者的权利。他们组建了诸如美国退休人员协会(AARP)等团体,并在政治舞台上发挥着积极作用。这些团体推动了1967年《就业年龄歧视法》的通过,该法案禁止歧视40至65岁之间的人。此外,在1978年对该法案的修订中,强制退休年龄从65岁提高到70岁,并于1986年在大多数职业中取消了强制退休年龄。老年人是一支有效的政治力量;当拥有超过3800万会员的AARP发声时,立法者往往会倾听。由于老年人的投票率远高于年轻人,因此他们的利益在政府中总体上得到了更好的体现,这进一步增强了这些团体的影响力。由于美国老年人的数量预计将继续以如此惊人的速度增长,他们的影响力在未来几十年内只会越来越大。

Age Discrimination In reaction to the problems facing older people, the gerontological set has turned to political and social activism, demanding their rights as individuals and as workers. They have formed groups, such as the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), which play an active role in the political arena. These groups helped to win passage of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which prohibits discrimination against persons between the ages of forty and sixty-five. Moreover, in the amendments to that Act, in 1978, the mandatory retirement age was raised from sixty-five to seventy, and in 1986 it was eliminated for most occupations. The elderly are an effective political force; when the AARP, which has more than thirty-eight million members, speaks, lawmakers tend to listen. The effect of these groups is compounded by the fact that elderly people vote at much higher rates than young people, so their interests are on the whole much better represented in government. Because the numbers of older Americans are expected to continue to grow at such an impressive rate, their influence can only increase over the next few decades.

年龄歧视所涉及的问题并不简单。例如,60岁的人与25岁的人有所不同;他们与人相处的方式也不同。如果一家商店认为顾客更喜欢年轻的售货员,那么它基于年龄进行“歧视”是否违法?根据现行法律,它的确违法。或者,一些公司利用65岁或70岁的退休年龄来解雇那些无法跟上节奏的员工,而无需明确说明解雇他们的原因。根据《就业年龄歧视法》,他们不能将这一变化归咎于一般规则,从而为双方挽回面子。将年长员工培训为新员工是另一个问题。许多工作需要多年的培训,为了收回对员工的投资,公司指望该员工在公司工作足够长的时间。

The issues involved in age discrimination are not simple ones. For example, a sixty-yearold person differs from a twenty-five-year-old person; each relates to people in a different way. If a store believes customers prefer to have younger salespeople, should it be against the law if it “discriminates” on the basis of age? Under current laws, it is. Alternatively, some firms used the sixty-five or seventy retirement age to ease out employees who were unable to keep up, without having to state explicitly the reason for their release. Under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, they cannot blame the change on a general rule and thus save face for both. Training older persons as new employees presents another problem. Many jobs require years of training, and in order to recoup an investment in a worker, a firm counts on that employee working for the firm for a sufficiently long period of time.

当然,这种论点也可以反过来。有些公司为了节省养老金,会在员工退休前解雇他们。另一些公司则仅仅为了树立更好的形象而解雇年长员工,借口是“培训”或“客户看法”。随着工薪阶层比例下降和养老金领取者人数增加,年龄群体冲突开始出现。许多公司面临的困境在于,是继续聘用经验更丰富的年长员工,还是聘请更有活力、更有创意的年轻员工来取代他们。事实上,在21世纪初,随着劳动力短缺的加剧,一些公司开始欢迎退休年龄及以上的员工,因为他们可靠且有职业道德。未来,我们肯定会听到更多关于年龄与就业问题的讨论,无论是讨论年轻劳动力还是老龄劳动力,因为正如本文和本章前面所讨论的那样,这表明我们的社会结构正在发生变化。

The argument can, of course, be reversed. Some firms have fired workers right before retirement in order to save pension payments. Others have merely fired older workers in order to have a better image, using “training” or “customers’ perception” as an excuse. Age group conflicts are beginning to appear as the percentage of wage earners goes down and the number of pension recipients increases. The dilemma in many firms is in deciding whether to keep on older workers, who have had much more experience, or to hire in their place a younger workforce with more energy and newer ideas. In fact, in the early 2000s, as worker shortages developed, some firms began to welcome workers at and above retirement age because of their reliability and their work ethic. In the future, we are certain to hear more about the issue of age and employment, whether discussing a young workforce or an older workforce, because, as discussed here and earlier in the chapter, it is indicative of an ongoing change in the structure of our society.

身体残疾歧视

Physical Disabilities Discrimination

另一种已成为公共政策议题的歧视是对残疾人的歧视。1990年,美国通过了《美国残疾人法案》(ADA),禁止基于工人残疾的就业歧视。该法案于2008年修订,禁止拥有15名或以上员工的公司基于身体或精神残疾、过去或当前的医疗状况进行歧视,也禁止公司设立或维护设置阻碍残疾人行动的实质性物理障碍的工作场所。这种歧视有时被称为“健全主义”(ableism),即基于能力而对他人进行的歧视,这使其与种族主义或性别歧视(基于种族或性别而进行的歧视)相提并论。

Yet another type of discrimination that has been the subject of public policy is discrimination against people with disabilities. In 1990 the United States passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which prohibits employment discrimination on the basis of workers’ disabilities. The law, which was amended in 2008, prohibits companies with fifteen or more employees from discriminating on the basis of physical or mental disabilities, or past or current medical conditions, and from creating or maintaining worksites that include substantial physical barriers to the movement of people with physical disabilities. Such discrimination is sometimes called “ableism”—discrimination against people on the basis of their abilities— which makes it comparable with racism or sexism—discrimination against people on the basis of race or gender.

“能力歧视”这一术语也体现了这项法律的一些问题,因为在大多数人看来,一个人的工作能力应该是决定其是否获得工作。法律试图阻止公司在招聘时基于不影响工作表现的身体残疾而非对工作表现至关重要的身体能力进行歧视。然而,做出这种区分通常很困难,因此,哪些歧视被视为允许的,哪些被视为不允许的,一直是众多法庭案件的主题。这些案件提供了所谓的“判例法”指南,用于指导如何做出区分。

The “ableism” terminology also captures some of the problems with this law, since, in most peoples views, how able a person is to do a job should be a key element in whether that person gets the job. What the law attempts to do is to prevent firms from discriminating in hiring based on physical disabilities that do not affect job performance, not physical abilities that are central to job performance. Making that distinction, however, is often difficult, and thus what is and is not perceived as allowable discrimination has been the subject of numerous court cases. These cases provide what are called “case law” guides to making the distinction.

结论

Conclusion

关于社会分层及其引发的问题的讨论到此结束,但这并不是因为我们已经穷尽了所有主题——我们只是触及了其中的许多主题。我们结束讨论是因为篇幅有限,而且还有很多其他主题需要讨论。这些其他主题——社会制度、经济和政治——大多从不同的视角探讨一些相同的问题,而每个视角都为理解社会问题和社会科学家的思维方式提供了新的视角。

At this point we end our discussion of stratification and the issues it raises, but not because we have exhausted the topics—we have only touched on many of them. We end it because of the pressure of space and the variety of other topics to be covered. Most of these other topics— social institutions, economics, and politics—deal with some of the same issues from a different perspective, and each perspective provides yet another insight into the problems of society and the workings of social scientists’ minds.

我们对分层的讨论旨在鼓励您得出自己的结论。尽管我们尽力保持分析的客观性,但显然,仅从章节的写作方式来看,某些偏见就显而易见。

Our discussion of stratification was designed to encourage you to draw your own conclusions. Obviously, merely in the way the chapters are written, certain biases became clear, although we worked hard to keep the analyses as objective as possible.

然而,我们可以得出结论,阶层分化和歧视确实存在。这一点几乎毋庸置疑。公平地说,这些问题远比任何一方的支持者通常所阐述的要复杂得多,我们必须谨慎,不要过分关注某一方的论点。我们之所以在此提出方法论问题,是因为我们大多数人都参与过某种歧视行为——要么歧视,要么被歧视(而且往往是同时发生在不同的情境中)。正是在这种情况下,我们的客观性才会丧失,我们会发现情况的公平与否显而易见,毋庸置疑。此时,理性的话语就会崩溃。每当你似乎有如此强烈的信念时,数到十,然后试着“设身处地为他人着想”。

We can, however, conclude that stratification and discrimination do exist. Of that there is little doubt. It also seems fair to say that the issues are far more complicated than the advocates of either side generally present, and we must be careful not to focus too strongly on one side’s argument. We raise the methodology issue at this point because most of us are involved in some type of discriminatory action—either discriminating or being discriminated against (and often at the same time in different contexts). It is at precisely such instances that our objectivity leaves us and we find the fairness or unfairness of the situation clear and beyond question. At this point, rational discourse breaks down. Whenever you seem to have such a strong belief, count to ten and try to “walk a mile in the other persons shoes.”

学习回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 种族偏见的四个原因是传统的影响、心理需求、自我和经济利益。
  • Four reasons for ethnic prejudice are the influence of tradition, psychological needs, ego, and economic advantages.
  • 少数群体是被单独挑出来给予不平等、负面待遇的群体,而主导群体则是被单独挑出来给予积极待遇的群体。
  • A minority group is a group of people singled out for unequal, negative treatment, whereas a dominant group is singled out for positive treatment.
  • 尽管美国在处理针对各族裔的偏见问题上取得了进展,但仍有很长的路要走。
  • Although the United States has made progress in dealing with the problem of prejudice against various ethnic groups, it still has a long way to go.
  • 尽管最近出台了几项旨在解决非法墨西哥移民问题的法律,但非法墨西哥移民仍然是一个问题。
  • Undocumented Mexican immigration continues to be a problem despite several recent laws meant to deal with it.
  • 反犹太主义有所减少,但仍然是一个潜在问题。
  • Anti-Semitism has been reduced, but it remains a potential problem.
  • 美国的反伊斯兰歧视现象日益严重。
  • Anti-Islamic discrimination is on the rise in the United States.
  • 女性在争取平等方面已经取得了长足进步,但距离实现完全平等还有很长的路要走。
  • Women have made strides toward equality but still have a way to go before they achieve full equality.
  • 老年人很可能成为二十一世纪一支重要的政治力量。
  • Senior citizens are likely to be a major political force in the twenty-first century.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 平权行动计划 (232)
  • affirmative action programs (232)
  • 实际年龄(247)
  • chronological age (247)
  • 事实上的种族隔离 (231)
  • de facto segregation (231)
  • 法律上的种族隔离 (231)
  • de jure segregation (231)
  • 歧视(226)
  • discrimination (226)
  • 主导群体(227)
  • dominant groups (227)
  • 平等权利修正案(ERA) (243)
  • Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) (243)
  • 族裔 (224)
  • ethnic group (224)
  • 西班牙裔(237)
  • Hispanics (237)
  • 移民配额法案 (239)
  • Immigration Quota Act (239)
  • 微侵犯 (234)
  • microaggressions (234)
  • 少数群体(227)
  • minority groups (227)
  • 偏见 (225)
  • prejudice (225)
  • 隔离但平等原则(231)
  • separate-but-equal doctrine (231)
  • 系统性种族主义 (234)
  • systemic racism (234)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 为什么种族和民族差异在很大程度上是彼此独立的?
  2. Why are racial and ethnic differences largely independent of each other?
  3. 是否已经证明某些民族的智力发展能力优于其他民族?是否已经证明所有民族的智力和情感发展能力都与生俱来相似?请解释。
  4. Has it been proved that some ethnic groups are superior to others in their capacity for mental development? Has it been proved that all ethnic groups are alike in their inborn capacities for mental and emotional development? Explain.
  5. 您如何解释世界上种族偏见的存在及其程度?
  6. How would you explain the existence and the extent of ethnic prejudice in the world?
  7. 偏见与歧视有何关系?
  8. What is the relationship of prejudice to discrimination?
  9. 为什么黑人少数群体的地位与美国其他少数群体的地位不同?
  10. Why is the position of the black minority different from that of any other minority group in the United States?
  11. 最高法院的普莱西诉弗格森案和布朗诉教育委员会案对合法种族隔离有何影响?
  12. What effect did the Supreme Court cases of Plessy v. Ferguson and Brown v. Board of Education have on legal segregation?
  13. 消除事实上的学校隔离存在哪些障碍?
  14. What are the obstacles to the elimination of de facto school segregation?
  15. 黑人的经济地位与白人相比如何?列举给黑人带来经济利益的主要因素。
  16. How does the economic position of blacks compare with that of whites? List the major factors that have brought economic gains to blacks.
  17. 在保护美国黑人的公民权利和政治权利方面取得了哪些进展?你认为哪些是最重要的?请讨论一下还有哪些工作需要完成。
  18. What advances have been made in protecting the civil and political rights of black Americans? Which do you think have been most significant? Discuss what still needs to be accomplished.
  19. 黑人的社会、政治和经济地位是否在持续提升?请捍卫你的观点。
  20. Are blacks continuing to improve their social, political, and economic position? Defend your point of view.
  21. 贡纳尔·默达尔 (Gunnar Myrdal) 说,像美国种族问题这样复杂的社会问题永远无法得到“绝对”的解决,他的意思是什么?
  22. What does Gunnar Myrdal mean when he says that no social problem as complex as the US race problem is ever solved in an “absolute” sense?
  23. 为什么民族友好关系对于主流群体和少数民族都很重要?
  24. Why are friendly relations between ethnic groups important to both the dominant and the minority groups?
  25. 讨论亚洲人移民美国的历史。
  26. Discuss the history of Asian migration to the United States.
  27. 您如何解释欧洲和美国都存在反犹太主义?
  28. How do you account for the existence of anti-Semitism in both Europe and the United States?
  29. 出于国家安全需要,歧视穆斯林是可以接受的吗?
  30. Is discrimination against Muslims acceptable because of national security needs?
  31. 女性平均收入低于男性的原因可能有哪些?这是否必然意味着个人或企业存在歧视?
  32. What might be some of the reasons the average earnings for a woman are lower than the average earnings for a man? Does this necessarily imply discrimination by individuals or firms?
  33. 是什么决定了你的职业抱负?这些抱负是否反映了制度歧视?
  34. What determined your career aspirations? Do those aspirations reflect institutional discrimination?
  35. 65岁以上人口比例的增长会对我们的社会产生什么影响?
  36. How is the growth in the proportion of people over age sixty-five in the population likely to affect our society?
  37. 年龄歧视与其他类型的歧视有何区别?
  38. What differentiates age discrimination from other types of discrimination?
  39. 如果一家商店倾向于雇佣更年轻的销售人员,应该允许它这样做吗?为什么?
  40. If a store prefers to hire younger salespeople, should it be allowed to do so? Why or why not?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 什么是全国 LGBT 律师协会 ( https://lgbtbar.org )?
  2. What is the National LGBT Bar Association (https://lgbtbar.org)?
  3. 请访问美国平等就业机会委员会的网站www.eeoc.gov/ 。他们最新的新闻公告是什么?
  4. Go to www.eeoc.gov/, the website of the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. What is their latest news announcement?
  5. 请访问www.newsweek.com/minorities-womenhighly-satisfied-military-work-90615阅读文章。哪个群体在军队中最满意?与文职工作相比如何?造成这种结果的可能原因是什么?
  6. Go to www.newsweek.com/minorities-womenhighly-satisfied-military-work-90615 and read the article. What group is the most satisfied in the military? How does this compare to civilian occupations? What is the likely reason for these results?
  7. 阿拉伯裔美国人研究所 ( www.aaiusa.org/ ) 列出了一些著名的阿拉伯裔美国人。列出一些你熟悉的名字,或许是通过体育或娱乐节目认识的。
  8. The Arab American Institute (www.aaiusa.org/) identifies some famous Americans of Arab descent. List the names familiar to you, perhaps through sports or entertainment.
  9. 根据www.hrw.org/news,人权观察组织将哪些问题列为当前涉及美国和人权的问题之一?
  10. Based on www.hrw.org/news, what does the Human Rights Watch organization list as one of the current issues involving the United States and human rights?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 亚历山大、米歇尔和康奈尔·韦斯特,《新吉姆克劳法:色盲时代的大规模监禁》纽约:新出版社,2012 年。
  • Alexander, Michelle, and Cornel West, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, New York: The New Press, 2012.
  • 阿皮亚,夸梅·安东尼,《束缚的谎言》纽约:诺顿出版社,2018 年。
  • Appiah, Kwame Anthony, The Lies That Bind, New York: Norton Publishers, 2018.
  • 艾芙隆,诺拉,《我对自己的脖子感到难过以及作为女人的其他想法》纽约:克诺夫出版社,2006 年。
  • Ephron, Nora, I Feel Bad about My Neck And Other Utoughts on Being a Woman, New York: Knopf, 2006.
  • Kendi,Ibram,《如何成为一名反种族主义者》,伦敦:One World,2019 年。
  • Kendi, Ibram, How to Be an Antiracist, London: One World, 2019.
  • Kendi, Ibram 和 Cornel West,《从一开始就被烙上印记》纽约:Nation Books,2016 年。
  • Kendi, Ibram and Cornel West, Stamped from the Beginning, New York: Nation Books, 2016.
  • Kendi,Ibram 和 Keisha Blain,《四百个灵魂:非裔美国人的社区历史》伦敦:One World,2021 年。
  • Kendi, Ibram, and Keisha Blain, Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, London: One World, 2021.
  • Lareau, Annette,《不平等的童年:阶级、种族和家庭生活》,第二版(十年后更新),加利福尼亚州伯克利:加州大学出版社,2011 年。
  • Lareau, Annette, Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life, 2nd ed. with update a decade later, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2011.
  • Lentin, Alana 和 Gavan Titley,《多元文化主义的危机:新自由主义时代的种族主义》伦敦:Zed Books,2011 年。
  • Lentin, Alana, and Gavan Titley, The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age, London: Zed Books, 2011.
  • 利特曼,玛丽亚 A.,《女性奥秘的演变:寻找幸福结局》 2015 年。
  • Litman, Malia A., Evolution of the Feminine Mystique: Searching for Happily Ever After, 2015.
  • 希瑟·麦吉,《我们的总和:种族主义给每个人带来的代价以及我们如何才能繁荣》伦敦:One World Publishers,2021 年。
  • McGhee, Heather, The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper, London: One World Publishers, 2021.
  • Gunnar Myrdal,《美国困境》第 2 卷,纽约:万神殿,1975 年。
  • Myrdal, Gunnar, An American Dilemma, 2 vols., New York: Pantheon, 1975.
  • 奥巴马,巴拉克,《我父亲的梦想:种族和遗产的故事》纽约:皇冠出版社,2004 年。
  • Obama, Barack, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, New York: Crown, 2004.
  • 罗斯坦,理查德,《法律的颜色:美国政府如何实施种族隔离的被遗忘的历史》纽约:诺顿出版社,2017 年。
  • Rothstein, Richard, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, New York: Norton Publishers, 2017.
  • 桑德伯格,谢丽尔,《向前一步:女性、工作与领导意志》纽约:克诺夫出版社,2013 年。
  • Sandberg, Sheryl, Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, New York: Knopf, 2013.
  • 斯劳特,安妮玛丽,《未完成的事业:女人男人工作家庭》纽约:兰登书屋,2015 年。
  • Slaughter, Anne-Marie, Unfinished Business: Women Men Work Family, New York: Random House, 2015.
  • 瑟斯顿·巴拉顿德,《如何成为黑人》纽约:哈珀柯林斯出版社,2012 年。
  • Thurston, Baratunde, How to Be Black, New York: HarperCollins, 2012.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第四部分 政治与社会

Part IV Politics and Society

第十四政府职能和形式

chapter 14The Functions and Forms of Government

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-14

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-14

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 列出政府的五项主要职能
  • List five primary functions of government
  • 确定三种截然不同的政府观点
  • Identify three contrasting views of government
  • 解释自由主义、保守主义、激进主义、反动主义和无政府主义的政府哲学
  • Explain the liberal, conservative, radical, reactionary, and anarchist philosophies of government
  • 区分民主与专制
  • Distinguish a democracy from an autocracy
  • 列举民主的一些显著特征
  • List some distinguishing characteristics of a democracy
  • 解释个人的民主概念
  • Explain the democratic concept of the individual
  • 列举独裁统治的常见理由
  • List the common justifications for an autocracy
  • 列举独裁统治的四个特征
  • List four characteristics of an autocracy

政府有必要吗?要回答这个问题,我们只需环顾世界,看看缺乏有效政府时会发生什么:在利比亚,由于缺乏有效政府,导致混乱、抢劫和破坏;在索马里,直到最近,由于缺乏有效政府,相互竞争的派系争夺控制权,导致乡村地区一片狼藉——抢劫、强奸、谋杀几乎不分皂白。这样的例子不胜枚举,但这两个例子说明了一点:有效的政府是必要的。

Are governments necessary? To answer this question, all we have to do is look around the world to see what happens when an effective government does not exist: to Libya, where the lack of an effective government led to anarchy, looting, and devastation; and to Somalia, where, up until recently, because no effective government existed, competing factions fought for control, spreading devastation throughout the countryside—looting, raping, and murdering almost indiscriminately. The list could go on, but these two examples make the point: Effective government is necessary.

政府是治理社会的一系列机构。人们常常对政府在社会中应扮演的角色存在激烈分歧,这导致了许多国家内部的政治冲突。关于政府在社会中应扮演的角色的争议,很大程度上源于对社会和政府的不同理解,任何关于政治和政府概念的讨论都需要对这些术语的含义达成共识。

Government is the set of institutions by which a society is ruled. People often disagree violently about the role that government should play in society, which accounts for many of the political conflicts within a nation. Much of the controversy over the proper role of government in society arises from different conceptions of society and government, and any discussion of political and governmental concepts requires some common agreement on the meaning of these terms.

本章第一部分探讨政府的各种职能。第二部分探讨各种政府形式及其运作方式。最后,第三部分探讨各种政府观点。

In the first part of this chapter, we look at the various functions of government. Then in the second part we consider the various forms of government and how they operate. Finally, in the third section we examine various views of government.

与所有社会机构一样,人们普遍认为,如果一个机构存在,它就必须发挥某种功能。政府也不例外。功能主义的政府研究方法认为,现有的事物必须保持原样,不得篡改,因为它发挥着必要的功能。对于大多数社会科学家来说,这种立场过于僵化,但这并不意味着功能主义方法不重要。在本书中,我们强调了变革以及变革如何改变机构在社会中的作用。因此,我们可能会发现,曾经发挥功能性作用的机构现在可能发挥着截然不同的作用,可能是功能性的,也可能是功能失调的。要判断这一点,我们必须仔细思考政府在我们社会中所发挥的功能。

As with all social institutions, there is a presumption that if an institution exists, it serves some function. Government is no exception. The functionalist approach to government argues that what exists must exist as it is and not be tampered with because it serves a necessary function. That is too rigid a position for most social scientists but that does not mean that the functionalist approach is not important. In this book we have emphasized change and how change modifies the role that institutions play in society. Thus, we may find that institutions that once played a functional role may now play a quite different role, maybe functional, maybe dysfunctional. To decide that, we have to consider carefully the functions government serves in our society.

政府的主要职能

The Primary Functions of Government

无论规模大小,任何社会都会发展出某种形式的组织化政府,因为需要一个能够全面管控社会的机构。如果我们考察政府所履行或声称履行的具体职能,就能更好地理解政府的作用。

In every society of any size, some form of organized government develops due to the need for an agency capable of exercising overall social control. The role of government can be better understood if we examine the specific functions governments perform or claim to perform.

维护内部秩序和外部安全

Maintaining Internal Order and External Security

尽管政府的职能多种多样,但其基本职责是保护公民免受内外敌人的侵害。每个政治社会的最高价值都是自我保护,而政府是唯一能够保护国家的机构。唯有政府才拥有强制执行社会既定生活准则的权力,也唯有政府才拥有国家所能提供的全部军事力量来抵御侵略。

Though the functions of government are many and varied, its basic job is to protect its citizens from internal and external enemies. The highest value in every political society is self-preservation, and the government is the one agency equipped to protect a nation. It alone possesses the power to enforce obedience to the rules of life that the society has established, and it alone has at its disposal all the military might that the nation can provide to repel aggression.

政府作为社会内部秩序的守护者,运用警察、监狱和法院,试图保护人身、财产、权利以及社会认为值得维护的一切。如果没有政府提供的“国内安宁”——和平与安全——我们的其他社会机构就不可能存在。每当法律和秩序崩溃,政府就无法履行其其他职能;人民陷入恐惧,社会的各个方面开始瓦解。无政府状态是一个没有政府或法律的社会。

Government, as the guardian of internal social order, employs police, prisons, and courts in its attempts to protect persons, property, rights, and whatever society designates as worthy of preservation. None of our other social institutions could exist without the “domestic tranquility”—the peace and safety—that government provides. Wherever law and order break down, the government is unable to perform its other functions; the people become fearful, and all aspects of society begin to disintegrate. Anarchy is a society without government or law.

无政府状态通常对社会危害极大,以至于在经历了一段社会混乱之后,人们有时会将一位能够恢复和平与秩序的独裁者视为福祉。认识到这一事实,十七世纪英国哲学家托马斯·霍布斯得出结论:政府源于自由人之间缔结的契约,他们渴望维护生命并提升生命满足感——“也就是说,渴望摆脱那种悲惨的战争状态”,而这种状态必然源于缺乏有效的政府。

Anarchy generally is so injurious to society that, after a period of social confusion, people sometimes welcome as a blessing a dictator who can restore peace and order. Recognition of this fact led Thomas Hobbes, the seventeenth-century English philosopher, to conclude that government results from a contract among free men desirous of preserving life and of increasing its contentment—“that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war” that necessarily results from the absence of effective government.

大多数先进的现代国家已经消除了内战,并将内部暴力降至低水平,几乎所有公民之间发生的冲突都能以有序和平的方式得到解决。如果国家未能做到这一点,流血、破坏和痛苦就会将它们撕裂,正如我们在叙利亚、也门、卢旺达、苏丹、刚果共和国等地以及一些令人悲伤的国家所见。

Most advanced modern nations have eliminated internal warfare and reduced internal violence to such a low level that nearly all the conflicts that arise among their citizens are settled in an orderly and peaceful manner. When countries have not succeeded in doing this, bloodshed, destruction, and agony tear them apart, as we have seen clearly in places such as Syria, Yemen, Rwanda, Sudan, the Republic of the Congo, and others on a sad list.

确保正义

Ensuring Justice

对正义的信仰似乎无处不在,每个现代政府都宣称致力于正义。正义是通过法律或司法程序维护或管理被认为公平的事物。它涉及个人(和群体)与社会以及彼此之间的关系。尽管正义对不同的人有不同的含义,也没有一个公认的定义能够描述其内涵,但几乎每个社会都认为正义意味着“人人享有其应得的”。

The belief in justice appears to be universal, and every modern government professes devotion to it. Justice is the maintenance or administration of what is considered fair—by law or by judicial proceedings. It is a concept that involves the relationships of individuals (and groups) both to society and to one another. Though justice means different things to different people and no one definition has been agreed on that describes its content, nearly every society considers it to mean “to everyone their due.”

并非所有政府都力求正义,尽管大多数政府都声称自己如此。所有建立在民众支持基础上的政府都渴望让民众相信他们受到了公正的对待。事实上,治安官、治安官、法官和法院几乎在任何地方都以某种形式存在,他们的主要职能是执行正义。

Not all governments strive for justice, although most generally profess to do so. All governments based on popular support aspire to convince the people that they are being treated justly In fact, justices of the peace, sheriffs, judges, and courts exist in some form almost everywhere, and their main function is to administer justice.

人们对政府的信任程度,取决于政府是否根据普遍的正义观念施以奖惩。当人们相信正义终将得到伸张时,他们便愿意将私人纠纷提交公共解决。例如,如果一个人的家被盗,只要他确信法院会公正处理此事,他通常更愿意将窃贼送上法庭,而不是试图进行个人报复。当政府未能充分履行这一职能,或失去执行其决定的能力时,不法行为就会蔓延,甚至可能引发革命。

People have confidence in their governments to the extent that they deal out rewards and punishment in accordance with the popular conception of justice. People willingly submit their private disputes for public settlement when they have faith that justice will be done. For example, a person whose home has been burglarized is generally willing to have the burglar prosecuted in a court of law, rather than attempting to secure personal revenge, as long as that person is convinced the courts will deal fairly with the matter. When government fails to perform this function adequately, or loses the ability to enforce its decisions, lawlessness begins to spread, and revolution may even result.

保障个人自由

Safeguarding Individual Freedoms

没有某种形式的政府,就不可能有组织、稳定的社会;没有稳定的社会,个人就不可能拥有真正的自由。所有政府都声称试图通过维护法律和秩序来保障某些自由。但就像确保正义一样,

Without some kind of government there can be no organized, stable society, and without a stable society there can be little real freedom for individuals. All governments profess to try to safeguard certain freedoms by maintaining law and order. But like the case of ensuring justice,

并非所有政府都真正这样做。民主政府比非民主政府走得更远;它们已逐渐接受将捍卫个人自由作为一项首要职能。例如,美国宪法宣称,联邦的一项根本宗旨是“确保我们自己和子孙后代享有自由的幸福”。

not all governments actually do so. Democratic governments go further than nondemocratic governments; they have come to accept the defense of individual freedoms as a primary function. For example, the Constitution of the United States declares that a fundamental purpose of the union is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

但在过去,当现代民主国家处于发展初期时,政府常常被视为自由的敌人。多年来,人们对政府作为个人自由捍卫者的信任逐渐增强,直到现在,在现代民主国家,人们才逐渐倾向于向政府寻求保护。例如,我们的联邦政府已经采取行动,打击垄断、腐败的政治行为以及对少数族裔和妇女的歧视。

But in past times, when modern democracies were in the early stages of their development, government was often considered the enemy of freedom. Faith in government as the defender of individual freedoms has developed slowly over the years, until now in modern democracies there is a trend to look toward government for protection. Our federal government, for example, has taken action against monopolies, corrupt political practices, and discrimination against ethnic minorities and women.

当然,这种情况有两面性。有时政府法规会不公正或不必要地限制个人自由,而且政府也始终存在着受特殊利益集团影响、无法反映多数人意愿的风险。

There are, to be sure, two sides to this picture. Sometimes government regulations unjustly or needlessly restrict personal freedom, and there is always the danger that government may fall under the influence of special interests and fail to reflect the will of the majority.

关于应该在多大程度上侵犯个人自由以保护社会,可能也存在争议。例如,在9/11袭击事件后,美国国会通过了《爱国者法案》,赋予政府拘留其认为可能是恐怖分子或可能支持恐怖分子的人员的权力。该法案极大地扩展了监控的范围。是被允许的,尤其是在线上活动中。近年来,一些人越来越担心政府会利用我们的数据来监控可疑活动。

There is also likely to be debate about how much individual freedom should be infringed on to protect society. For example, after the 9/11 attacks, the US Congress passed the Patriot Act, which gave the government the right to detain people it felt might be terrorists or others who might support them. The act greatly broadened the circumstances under which surveillance was permitted, especially with online activities. In recent years, there has been a growing concern among some that the government uses our data to monitor suspicious activity.

一些人认为《爱国者法案》走得太远;另一些人则认为它还不够。这些争论是有益的。现实是,只有当大量个人以及有组织的团体致力于捍卫个人自由时,个人自由才能安全。维护这些自由需要享有这些自由的人们积极且负责任地保持警惕。个人自由既是权利,也是责任,因此,必须捍卫它们,以确保其持续的力量和合法性。

Some felt the Patriot Act went too far; others felt it didn’t go far enough. These debates are healthy. The reality is that individual freedoms can be safe only when large numbers of individuals, and also organized groups, are dedicated to their defense. The preservation of these freedoms necessitates an active and responsible vigilance on the part of the people who enjoy them. Individual freedoms are responsibilities as well as rights, and as such, they must be defended to ensure their continued strength and legitimacy.

规范企业和个人的行为

Regulating Business's and Individuals' Actions

在现代社会的发展中,许多机构和团体应运而生,履行着各种职能。其中一些机构和团体提供重要的社会服务,但它们往往追求与社会福祉相悖的私利。在这种情况下,政府在规范人们的活动以协调他们之间关系方面发挥着重要作用。找到适度的监管和自由并非易事,民主国家往往会经历监管增减的循环。

In the growth of modern societies, many institutions and groups have developed to perform various functions. Some of these institutions and groups provide important social services, but often they pursue selfish interests that are contrary to the welfare of society. In such cases government plays the important role of regulating people’s activities so they are coordinated. Finding the appropriate amount of regulation and freedom is difficult, and democracies tend to go through cycles of increasing and decreasing regulation.

关于这项法规的争论,可以从政府应对新冠疫情的举措中看出一斑。各国政府制定了关于佩戴口罩、商店何时营业以及人与人之间必须保持多远距离的规定。一些人声称这些规定远远超出了政府的权限,而另一些人则认为这些规定是为了社会的利益,是政府的合法职能。他们指出,中国实施了更为严格的监管,并成功限制了新冠疫情的传播。另一些人则认为,个人自由的代价太高了。

An example of the debates about this regulation can be seen in the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Governments instituted mandates about the wearing of masks, when a store can open, and how far one had to remain from others. Some claimed that these mandates far exceeded government authority, while others argued that they were for the good of society and were legitimate functions of government. They pointed to the success of much stronger regulation in China and that it was successful in limiting the spread of Covid. Others argued that the cost in terms of individual freedom was too high.

促进普遍福利

Promoting the General Welfare

政府作为全面社会控制的机构,不可避免地要以各种方式促进普遍福利,而这些方式远超我们之前讨论的职能。近几十年来,政府的普遍福利活动成倍增加,但政府始终在某种程度上采取措施,促进公民的物质福祉。即使是古代政府也开展了一些福利活动。他们有时会援助农民,补贴私营企业,并控制物价。圣经记载了约瑟在埃及如何监督一项广泛的政府计划,收购和储存剩余粮食,以便在饥荒时期提供食物。现代国家扩展并强化了这一古老的政府职能。

Government as the agency for overall social control cannot escape the task of promoting the general welfare in a variety of ways that go beyond the functions we have discussed. The general welfare activities of government have multiplied many times in recent decades, but governments have always to some degree undertaken measures to promote the material wellbeing of their citizens. Even the governments of antiquity carried on some welfare activities. At times they gave aid to farmers, subsidized private enterprises, and controlled prices. The Bible relates how Joseph in Egypt supervised an extensive government program of buying and storing surplus grain to provide food in times of famine. The modern state has extended and intensified this ancient function of government.

政府提供了经济和社会互动得以进行的制度结构。它调节经济;征税;并禁止、保护和提供服务,以造福个人、群体和整个社会。无论我们是否思考,每个人每天都受到政府的要求及其提供的福利的影响。每当公民驾车离开家时,他们都会行驶在政府提供的街道和道路上;他们可以享受政府划定的公园;他们可以送孩子去政府资助的学校;他们使用政府签发的护照出国旅行,遇到麻烦时可以向其政府的领事或外交代表寻求援助;当他们失业或残疾时,他们可以得到政府的帮助;如果被指控违法,他们可以在政府设立的法庭上受审。这些只是个人受到政府影响、控制或受益的几种方式,所有这些都是为了促进普遍福利。政府的福利活动包括医疗服务、教育、社会保障和其他各种福利。

Government provides the institutional structure within which economic and social interaction can take place. It regulates the economy; levies taxes; and prohibits, protects, and provides services to benefit individuals, groups, and the whole of society. Whether we think about it or not, every person every day is affected by the demands of government and by the benefits it provides. Whenever citizens leave home in a car, they drive on streets and roads provided by government; they can enjoy parks set aside by government; they can send their children to government-supported schools; they travel abroad with government-issued passports, and in case of trouble can go to the consular or diplomatic agents of their government for aid; they can receive help from the government when they are unemployed or disabled; and if accused of breaking a law, they can be heard in a court established by government. These are only a few of the ways in which individuals are affected, controlled, or benefited by government, all for the purpose of promoting the general welfare. Welfare activities of government include health services, education, Social Security, and various other benefits.

政府提供这些福利是为了满足公众需求并增强自身实力。即使是独裁政权也认为,为工人提供退休假期和养老金符合自身利益。即使被剥夺了自由,民众也不太可能反抗一个看似关心他们福祉的政府。在民主国家,政治体制使公共政策更直接地响应民意,政府为了响应更多选民的意愿,大大扩展了其福利活动。

Governments furnish these benefits to meet public demands and to increase their own strength. Even dictatorships find it in their interest to provide workers with vacations and pensions on retirement. People, even if deprived of their liberties, are less likely to revolt against a government that appears to show consideration for their welfare. In democracies, where the political system makes public policy more directly responsive to public opinion, government has greatly broadened its welfare activities in response to the wishes of an enlarged electorate.

几个世纪以来,政治学者们一直认为,如果赋予民众投票权,他们就会要求重新分配财富和特权。在现代民主国家,财富和收入的再分配是通过累进所得税、遗产税、社会保障福利、公共援助金和公共住房项目等手段进行的。这种再分配的发生程度各不相同。例如,在 20 世纪 60 年代,所得税是高度累进的,遗产税很高,并且有许多政府项目旨在帮助穷人。在 20 世纪 80 年代和 90 年代,再分配的趋势有所减弱。例如,所得税的累进程度降低了。许多这样的变化得到了中下阶层的支持,即使这些变化并没有给他们带来经济上的帮助。这种支持可以用一种美国许多人持有的信念来解释,即应该把更多的精力放在增加总产出(提高每个人的收入)上,而不是放在收入再分配上。在奥巴马总统执政期间,新政府采取了更多再分配的举措。在特朗普总统执政期间,再分配有所减少,而在拜登总统执政期间,新的政府项目有所增加。

For centuries, students of politics have believed that if the masses were given the right to vote, they would demand a redistribution of wealth and privileges. In modern democracies, wealth and income have been redistributed by such means as progressive income taxes, inheritance taxes, Social Security benefits, public assistance payments, and public housing projects. This redistribution has happened to varying degrees. For example, in the 1960s, the income tax was highly progressive, inheritance taxes were high, and there were numerous government programs to help the poor. In the 1980s and 1990s that tendency toward redistribution was reduced. For example, the degree of progressiveness of the income tax was lowered. Many of these changes were supported by the lower-middle class, even though it did not help them economically. This support can be explained by a belief, held by many in the United States, that more effort should go into increasing total outputs—raising everyone’s income—and less into redistribution of income. Under President Obama there were moves towards more redistribution with new government. Under President Trump, there was a reduction, and under President Biden there has been an increase in new government programs.

关于政府性质的辩论

Debates About the Nature of Government

前述简短讨论总结了政府的各种职能以及围绕这些职能的争论。正如你所见,尽管政府履行着明确的职能,但围绕这些职能的争论依然激烈。在几个世纪以来的国家演变过程中,政府职能的性质在许多方面始终保持不变。然而,随着其他社会制度(例如家庭和社会习俗)随着技术变革而演变,政府履行这些职能的方式也发生了变化,政府形式也随之改变。文化差异导致不同国家走上了不同的发展道路,从而形成了不同的政府形式。现在我们来探讨这些问题。

The preceding brief discussion summarized the various functions of government and debates about those functions. As you can see, although a government serves definite functions, there are spirited debates about these activities. In the evolution of the state over the centuries, the nature of government functions has in many ways remained the same. However, as other social institutions, such as the family and social mores, have evolved in response to technological change, the ways that governments carry out these functions have changed and so have the forms of government. Differences in culture have led different states down different paths and, therefore, to differing forms of government. We now turn to these issues.

政治理论与政府

Political Theory and Government

政府是迄今为止所有社会机构中最强大的。它控制着极具强制性的资源,并接管了无数曾经属于家庭、宗教和商业机构的职能和责任,例如教育和各种社会服务。例如,在过去,子女照顾年迈的父母;如今,政府通常通过医疗保险等社会项目来履行这一职责。尽管如今政府能够监管和控制所有其他社会机构,但它反过来又受这些机构的控制。人们的信仰、态度以及他们在家庭、宗教和商业机构中的行为方式决定了他们所发展的政府类型,而政府职能的扩张往往源于其他机构未能满足社会需求。

Government is by far the most powerful of all social institutions. It controls resources of extreme physical coercion, and it has taken over countless functions and responsibilities that once resided in the family, religion, and business enterprises, such as education and various social services. For example, in earlier times children took care of elderly parents; today, the government often does this through social programs such as Medicare. Although government today is in a position to regulate and control all other social institutions, it is in turn controlled by them. People’s beliefs and attitudes and the ways they behave in the family, religion, and business enterprises determine the kind of government they develop, and often the expansion of government functions results from the failure of other institutions to meet social needs.

政治是个人影响政府的手段。由于政府和政治的重要性,一个被称为政治理论的庞大研究领域应运而生,用于研究政府和政治。政治理论是研究政府和政治本质的研究领域。政治理论起源于亚里士多德的著作,但我们目前的政府体系更多地建立在政治理论家约翰·洛克或托马斯·霍布斯的著作之上。他们对个人与国家关系的不同看法构成了许多现代政治意识形态的基础,这些意识形态是对某种理念的根深蒂固的信仰——这种信仰如此根深蒂固,如此坚定,以至于人们愿意为这些信仰献出生命。例如,民主——人民的统治——是美国的意识形态,它植根于约翰·洛克的著作。另一种意识形态,法西斯主义——相信由具有特殊能力的精英统治——是一些人认为比民主更可取的政府形式的基础。

Politics is the means by which individuals affect government. Because of the importance of government and politics, an immense area of study, called political theory, has developed to study governments and politics. Political theory is that area of inquiry dealing with the nature of government and politics. Political theory has its origins in the writings of Aristotle, but our current systems of government are founded more on the writings of political theorists John Locke or Thomas Hobbes. Their alternative views of the relationships between the individual and the state form the basis of many modern political ideologies, deeply held beliefs in an idea—held so deeply and with such conviction that a person is willing to die for those beliefs. For example, democracy—the rule of the people—is the ideology of the United States, and it is rooted in the writings of John Locke. An alternative ideology, fascism—the belief in the rule of an elite whose members have special abilities—is the basis for what some people have argued is a preferable form of government as compared to democracy.

两种政治意识形态相遇,往往引发冲突。例如,第二次世界大战在某种程度上是法西斯主义与民主之间的冲突。意识形态与人们对政府性质的不同看法密切相关。如果我们认为政府在社会中没有任何作用,那么我们的意识形态立场很可能与那些认为政府发挥积极作用的人截然不同。

When two political ideologies meet, there often is conflict. For example, World War II was in some ways a conflict between fascism and democracy. Ideologies are closely related to various views of the nature of government. If we believe that there is no role in society for government, we will likely have a significantly different ideological position than someone who believes that government has a positive role.

关于政府性质的三种观点

Three Views of the Nature of Government

为了组织我们对这些问题的思考,区分以下三种关于政府性质的观点是有帮助的:(1)政府是必要之恶;(2)政府是积极的善;(3)政府是不必要的恶。

To organize our thinking about these issues, it is helpful to differentiate the following three views of the nature of government: (1) government as a necessary evil; (2) government as a positive good; and (3) government as an unnecessary evil.

政府是必要之恶

Government as a Necessary Evil

政府伴随我们一生,告诉我们什么能做,什么不能做。如果我们想开车,必须先通过政府考试,拿到政府颁发的驾照;然后,政府又禁止我们在方便的地方停车,并因超速罚款。当我们想去工作时,政府却强迫我们继续上学。(我们被告知年龄太小,不能工作。)政府有权让我们辍学,强迫我们服兵役。我们只有获得政府颁发的执照才能成为律师或医生。如果我们赚了钱,政府就会从中抽取一部分税金。如果我们在有生之年足够幸运地积累了足够的财富留给子孙后代,政府可能会征收遗产税。诸如此类的行为使政府成为人们抱怨和谩骂的对象,并让许多人觉得,政府充其量只是一个必要之恶。

Government follows us all through life, telling us what we can and cannot do. If we want to drive a car, we must first pass a government examination and buy a government license; then government forbids us to park in convenient places and fines us for exceeding the speed limit. It forces us to stay in school when we want to go to work. (We are told that we are too young to work.) It has the right to take us out of school and compel us to enter military service. We can only become a lawyer or a doctor by securing a license from the government. If we earn any money, government claims a share in taxes. If we are fortunate enough during our lifetime to accumulate enough wealth to leave to our children, government may impose an inheritance tax. Such activities as these make government the object of complaint and abuse and cause many people to feel that, at best, government is a necessary evil.

政府的本质在于禁止、限制、监管、强迫和胁迫。例如,政府拥有颁布法律的权力和执行法律的权力。父母、治疗师和雇主可以哄骗和谴责,但只有政府才能合法地监禁。政府根据其对公共安全、道德和福利的理念来规范家庭和经济事务。在所有社会控制机构中,政府是最具包容性和最强大的。事实上,政府拥有如此强大的力量,以至于没有人能够安全地忽视它。

The very essence of government is to prohibit, to restrain, to regulate, to compel, and to coerce. For example, government possesses the authority to pass laws and the power to enforce them. Parents, therapists, and employers may cajole and condemn, but only government can legally imprison. It regulates the affairs of family and economic enterprise in accordance with its conception of public security, morality, and welfare. Of all institutions of social control, government is the most inclusive and the most powerful. Here, indeed, is a power so great that no one can safely ignore it.

政府作为积极的善

Government as a Positive Good

政府的另一面也可以被描绘出来。许多年前,一位年轻的法律助理问最高法院法官奥利弗·温德尔·霍姆斯:“你不讨厌纳税吗?” 据说,霍姆斯大法官回答说:“不,年轻人,我喜欢纳税。我用税收换来了文明。”

Another picture of government can also be painted. Many years ago, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was asked by a young law clerk, “Don’t you hate to pay taxes?” Justice Holmes is reported to have answered, “No, young man, I like to pay taxes. With taxes I buy civilization.”

几年后,当税收大幅上涨时,最高法院大法官威廉·道格拉斯(William O. Douglas)对政府做出了另一个经典的论述。他写道:

Some years later, when taxes were much higher, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas made another classic statement about government. He wrote:

像我们上面提到的那些人一样,他们认为政府是一种积极的善。他们意识到托马斯·潘恩的论点有一定道理,他认为政府是“弥补道德缺陷”的必要条件,当我们的道德缺陷导致我们互相伤害时,政府会迫使我们做正确的事。对这些人而言,政府不仅仅是一个“惩罚者”,更是公共福祉的促进者。它是采取积极行动、将美好生活的基本要素带给所有人的适当社会工具。

People such as those we have quoted think of government as a positive good. They realize there is some truth in Thomas Paines contention that government is necessary “to supply the defect of moral virtue,” to force us to do right when our moral weakness would lead us to injure one another. For these people, government is more than a “punisher”; it is a promoter of the common good. It is the proper social instrument for positive action to bring the essentials of the good life to all the people.

政府是不必要的邪恶

Government as an Unnecessary Evil

共产主义学说的作者们描绘了另一种政府图景。共产主义是一种社会组织理论,其基础是所有财产公有,实际所有权归属于社区或国家。例如,马克思、列宁和斯大林将政府描绘成一种压迫工具,“一个阶级镇压另一个阶级的特殊机器”。他们认为,所有资本主义政府都是富人用来剥削穷人的工具。资本主义民主允许人民“每隔几年决定压迫阶级的哪些特定代表应该进入议会,代表他们并压迫他们”。在共产主义理论中,与无产阶级或工薪阶层相比,资产阶级主要关注的是财产价值

Writers of communist doctrine offered another picture of government. Communism is a theory of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community or state. Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, for example, portrayed government as an instrument of oppression, “special machinery for the suppression of one class by another.” All capitalist governments, so the argument runs, are tools of the rich used to enforce the exploitation of the poor. Capitalist democracy allows the people “once every few years, to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class should be in parliament to represent and oppress them.” In communist theory, the bourgeoisie is the class that, in contrast to the proletariat or wage-earning class, is primarily concerned with property values.

按照这种思维方式,只有在共产主义内外敌人被转化或消灭之前,镇压机制才是必要的。一般而言,共产主义理论将政府,或者至少是政府的强制权力,视为一种不必要的罪恶,应当尽快废除。

In this way of thinking, machinery for suppression will be necessary only until the internal and external enemies of communism are converted or destroyed. In general, communist theory pictures government, or at least the coercive powers of government, as an unnecessary evil, to be abolished as soon as possible.

在这方面,共产主义理论与无政府主义者的理论相似。共产主义者一直认为政府是不必要的邪恶,并主张最终废除一切政治权力和一切强制手段。然而,值得注意的是,尽管早期共产主义理论家卡尔·马克思写道,应该终结“政府的强制权力”并实现国家“消亡”,但前苏联以及其他共产主义国家发现很难遵循自己的意识形态。苏联和一些东欧国家的共产主义政府的垮台并非因为它们消亡,而是因为被那些理论上服务于其利益的人民推翻。如今几乎没有纯粹的共产主义政府。在中国,共产党仍然执政,但它在加强对政治的控制的同时,在经济中的主导作用有所减弱。通过这种方式,它提供了一种新的共产主义模式,这种模式在未来可能会变得更加重要。

In this respect, communist theory resembles that of the anarchists. Communists have always considered government to be an unnecessary evil and have advocated the eventual abolition of all political authority and all instruments of coercion. It should be noted, however, that although Karl Marx, the early communist theoretician, wrote that there should be an end to the “coercive powers of government” and a “withering away” of the state, the former USSR and other communist nations found it difficult to follow their own ideology. Communist governments in the Soviet Union and a number of eastern European countries ended not because they withered away, but because they were removed by the very people whose interests, in theory, they were serving. Today there are almost no purely communist governments. In China the Communist Party still rules, but it has reduced its pervasive role in the economy, even as it strengthens its control over politics. In doing so, it is offering a new version of communism that will likely become more important in the future.

政府应该有多大的权力?

How Powerful Should Government Be?

另一种对人们对政府的看法进行分类的方法是,根据他们认为政府发挥的作用有多大。图 14.1显示了人们观点的不同分类,从认为政府作用最小的人群开始,到认为政府作用最大的人群结束。

Another way to classify peoples views of government is by how strong a role they see government playing. Figure 14.1 represents various classifications of people’s views, starting with those who see the least role for government and ending with those who see the strongest.

那些认为政府应发挥最小作用的人,例如无政府主义者和自由主义者,认为政府必然会以不可接受的方式限制个人自由。无政府主义者认为,社会制度,例如私有财产和国家,会剥削和腐蚀人类。如果这些专制结构被消除,人们就能自由地实现其内在的善,并建立起全人类本能的集体生活方式。自由主义者主张赋予个人更多自由。他们厌恶专制权威,主张积极的自由和个人个性的自由表达。哲学家罗伯特·诺齐克等自由主义者认为,最小国家应该发挥作用。他们不同意无政府主义者的观点,认为我们需要国家来防御其他国家的入侵,但现代国家所做的很多事情都是有害的。

Individuals who believe in the least role for government, such as anarchists and libertarians, argue that government necessarily limits individual freedom in an unacceptable way. Anarchists are people who believe that the institutions of society, such as private property and the state, exploit and corrupt humans. If these authoritarian structures were removed, people would be free to realize their intrinsic goodness and establish the communal lifestyle instinctive to all human beings. Libertarians are people who advocate greater freedom for individuals. They dislike arbitrary authority and argue for active freedom and the free expression of the individual personality. Libertarians, such as the philosopher Robert Nozick, see a role for a minimal state. They disagree with the anarchists, arguing that we need the state to provide defense against other states, but that much of what modern states do is harmful.

在我们的分类体系中,接下来是反动派。反动派认为,一个比最小化政府更有必要的政府,但政府目前在社会中扮演的角色过大。他们更倾向于回到过去,在他们认为政府在过去所扮演的较小角色下组织起来。

Next in our classification system come reactionaries. Reactionaries believe that more than a minimal government is necessary, but that the role government currently plays in society is much too large. They prefer turning back the clock and organizing under the smaller role they believe the government played in earlier times.

无政府主义、自由意志主义和反动派的观点在美国并不普遍。大多数人认为,我们需要一个类似于我们现有形式的政府。他们之间的差异主要体现在政府的程度和所扮演的角色上。最常用的术语及其普遍接受的描述如下:保守派主张政府发挥比现有更小的作用;温和派主张政府发挥与现有大致相同的作用;而自由派则主张政府发挥比现有更广泛的作用。这些关于政府的观点在美国占主导地位。

Anarchist, libertarian, and reactionary views are not widely held in the United States. Most individuals accept the need for government in a form similar to that which we now have. They differ primarily in degree and in the role they see government playing. The most commonly used terms, with their generally accepted descriptions, are the following: Conservatives favor a smaller role for government than currently exists; moderates favor about the same role for government as exists; and liberals favor a broader role for government than exists. These views of government are the predominant ones in the United States.

图 14.1对于政府角色的看法:一些夸张的描述

Figure 14.1Views of the role of government: some exaggerated characterizations.

通过考察这三种关于政府角色的不同观点,你会发现自由主义者和保守主义者之间的区别并不像上一段所列举的那样清晰。实际上,自由主义者倾向于将政府视为必要之恶,因此他们主张限制政府侵犯个人权利,强调言论自由和信仰自由等理念。自由主义创立之初,其重点是限制政府的作用——我们现在称之为保守主义。但随着时间的推移,自由主义开始与政府建立一个框架联系在一起,在这个框架内,个人的自由才具有真正的意义,因此,它与扩大政府规模联系在一起,尽管自由主义仍然坚持将政府视为必要之恶。

By considering the three different views of the role of government, you can see that the distinction between liberals and conservatives is not as clear-cut as the listing in the previous paragraph implies. In actuality, liberals tended to see government as a necessary evil and thus they favored limiting government’s role of infringing on individual rights, emphasizing concepts such as freedom of speech and freedom to worship as one wishes. When liberalism was founded, its focus was on limiting the role of government—the position we now call conservatism. But over time, liberalism became associated with government establishing a framework within which individuals’ freedoms have real meaning, and thereby it became associated with increasing the size of government, even though liberalism maintained its view of government as a necessary evil.

保守主义创立之初,其核心在于建立强有力的政府,因为保守派视政府为公共道德的守护者,因此也是一种潜在的公共利益。因此,保守派认为政府应该立法规范道德,并告诉人们何为是非。随着20世纪80年代美国基督教联盟政治团体的兴起,我们可以看到一些保守派立场再次被接受。美国的保守派观点也与以下政策相关:降低税收;取消或减少对公共和私人活动的监管;高度结构化的中小学教育,通过频繁的考试确保学生掌握基础知识;以及强调家庭价值观,例如稳定的婚姻和父母对子女的悉心养育。

When conservatism was founded, its focus was on a strong government because conservatives saw the government as a keeper of the public morals and, hence, as a potential public good. Therefore, conservatives felt that it was proper for government to legislate morality and to tell people what was right and what was wrong. With the rise in the 1980s of the Christian Coalition political groups in the United States, we can see some of these conservative positions being taken up again. The conservative viewpoint in the United States is also associated with policies such as lower taxes; elimination or reduction of regulation, both of public and private activities; highly structured elementary and secondary education, with frequent tests to be sure students are learning the basics; and an emphasis on the family values of stable marriage and careful rearing of children by the parents.

例如,保守派通常支持政府立法控制堕胎的权利,而堕胎自20世纪70年代以来就一直是备受争议的话题。自由派通常反对政府控制个人私生活的权力。在这个例子中,自由派支持政府干预较少,而不是较多。新右翼保守派通常支持政府控制堕胎行为的权利,因为这些保守派认为政府是积极的善——是社会道德准则的守护者。因此,在这样的问题上,保守派主张加强政府作用,而自由派则主张削弱政府作用。在这样的问题上,普遍接受的区分就不复存在了。

To illustrate, it is the conservatives who generally support the governments right to legislate on abortion, a topic that has become highly contentious since the 1970s. Liberals generally oppose the governments right to control an individual’s intimate life. In this example, liberals support less, not more, government. New Right conservatives generally support the government’s right to control abortion practices, because these conservatives see the government as a positive good—as the keeper of the society’s moral code. Therefore, on such an issue, conservatives favor a stronger government role whereas liberals favor a weaker government role. Over such issues the commonly accepted distinctions break down.

并非所有群体都符合这一分类。例如,你可能经常听到“激进派”这个词。激进派认为现有政府必须改变。他们并不一定支持政府发挥更大或更小的作用——只是希望改变现状。进步派也主张政府变革和改革,但被认为不如激进派“激进”。西奥多·罗斯福是美国最杰出的进步派之一,1912年他作为进步党候选人参选时,赢得了美国历史上第三党候选人的最高得票率。

Not all groups fit this classification. For example, you may often hear the term radical. Radicals believe that the existing government must be changed from what it is to something else. They do not necessarily favor a larger or smaller role for government—just a change from the existing situation. Progressives also advocate for change and reform of government, but are considered less “radical” than radicals. Theodore Roosevelt was one of the United States’ most prominent progressives, and when he ran as a Progressive Party candidate in 1912, he won the largest share of votes for a third-party candidate in US history.

每种观点的真理要素

Elements of Truth in Each of the Views

所有这些关于政府在社会中扮演的角色的观点都包含着一些真理。意见分歧部分源于政府的差异,部分源于每个政府所履行的不同职能。政府曾经压迫并剥削民众;它们有时几乎只关心约束人类社会中的不守规矩的因素。但它们也被社会利用,以积极的手段促进公共利益。对政府的理性评价必须基于许多考量,而关于政府在我们生活中扮演的角色,必然会存在争议。

All of these views of the role that government plays in society contain elements of truth. Differences of opinion arise in part from differences in governments and in part from the different functions that every government performs. Governments have been oppressive and have exploited the masses; they have at times been almost exclusively concerned with restraining the unruly elements in human society. But they have also been used by society to promote by positive means the common good. A rational evaluation of government must be based on many considerations, and there will inevitably be debate about the role that government plays in our lives.

政府形式

Forms of Government

划分政府的方式多种多样,没有一种是完美的。我们首先要区分的是民主国家、非民主国家和部分民主国家。

Of the many ways to divide governments, none is perfect. The first distinctions we draw are democratic, nondemocratic, and partially democratic countries.

民主一词及其概念均源自希腊语:demos意为“人民”,kratos意为“统治”。因此,民主的意思是人民的统治。民主政体是基于民选的政府;选举决定谁将掌权。

Both the word and the concept of democracy come from the Greeks: demos means “people” and kratos means “rule.” Thus, democracy means rule of the people. Democracies are governments based on a popular vote; elections decide who will be in power.

下一页的地图展示了21世纪初世界各国的划分方式。大约35%的国家是民主国家,25%的国家是部分民主国家,40%的国家是独裁国家。(各种划分之间的界限通常很模糊。)自那时起,部分民主国家逐渐减少,非民主国家的数量有所增加。在后续章节中,我们将更详细地讨论这些国家。这里我们仅提供一个简单的概述。

The map on the next page shows one way in which the countries of the world could be divided in the early 2000s. About 35 percent were democracies, 25 percent were partial democracies, and 40 percent were autocracies. (The lines between the various characterizations are oftentimes vague.) Since then, there has been a movement away from partial democracies and an increase in non-democratic countries. In later chapters, we discuss each in more detail. Here we simply present a basic overview.

民主国家

Democracies

民主这个词对不同的人有不同的含义。对古希腊哲学家柏拉图来说,民主意味着暴民统治或无政府状态。今天,对某些人来说,民主意味着伴随资本主义而来的政治制度;对另一些人而言,民主意味着社会主义。十九世纪之前,世界上很少有人认为民主是可取的。但今天,相对较少的人会承认反对民主。现在,几乎每个重要国家,包括前苏联加盟共和国,都自称是民主国家,尽管它们远未达到大多数人对民主的要求。最近出现了一波民主倒退,根据自由之家和政体等指数,可被称为民主国家的国家数量有所减少,这表明我们正处于一股反民主的浪潮之中。

Democracy is a word that means different things to different people. To the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, it meant mob rule, or anarchy. To some people today, it means the political system accompanying capitalism; to others, it means socialism. Before the nineteenth century, few people in the world considered democracy desirable. But today, comparatively few people will admit opposition to democracy. Now almost every important nation, including the republics of the former Soviet Union, claim to be democracies, even though they are far from meeting the requirements that most would ascribe to democracies. There has been a recent wave of democratic backsliding and a decrease in countries that would be described as democracies, according to indices like Freedom House and Polity, that suggests we are in a reverse wave against democracies.

在1990年之前的苏联术语中,共产主义是唯一真正的民主形式,因为在共产主义中,个人在经济领域采取行动的权利受到限制。苏联和一些美国学者认为,在资本主义国家,控制权实际上掌握在一小部分人手中——有时被称为权力精英(富人和政治建制派),而西方所谓的民主国家实际上是服务于权力精英利益的国家。

In pre-1990 Soviet terminology, communism, in which individuals’ rights to undertake actions within the economy were limited, was the only true form of democracy. Soviet and some US scholars argued that in capitalist countries control is actually in the hands of a small group of people—sometimes called the power elite (the wealthy and the political establishment)—and that the so-called democratic states of the West are in reality states serving the interests of the power elite.

这些论点或许正确,但大多数共产主义国家的现实却使其名誉扫地。在这些国家,共产党并非工人阶级的保护者,而往往是剥削者。由于经济体系效率低下,共产主义国家的精英阶层为了过上好日子不得不进行大量剥削,这在民众中引发了巨大的仇恨。正因如此,大多数西方民主国家的人都认为共产主义国家是独裁政权。西方有些人甚至认为,民主是“无产阶级的”。以及任何形式的政府对经济的广泛干预,例如苏联时期的干预,从长远来看都是不相容的——我们只能选择其中之一,而不能两者兼得。这一点尚有争议,但后苏联时代共产主义国家所发生的事情,对民主进行了极其积极的宣传。正如温斯顿·丘吉尔所言:“有人说,除了所有其他尝试过的政府形式外,民主是最糟糕的政府形式。”

These arguments may have been correct, but they were discredited by the reality of most of these communist states. In these states, the communist parties were not the protectors of the workers; often they were the exploiters. With their inefficient economic systems, to live well the elite in Communist countries had to exploit a lot, creating enormous animosity among the people. That’s why most people in the Western democracies believed that the communist states were dictatorships. Some people in the West even went so far as to maintain that democracy and any form of extensive governmental interference in the economy, such as they had in the Soviet Union, are in the long run incompatible—that we can have one or the other, but not both. That’s debatable, but what happened in the communist countries in the post-Soviet era has been an enormously positive advertisement for democracy As Winston Churchill aptly noted, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

然而,近年来,中国建立了一套体制,允许经济自由(通常与资本主义联系在一起)和共产党的政治控制(通常与共产主义联系在一起)。中国经济增长迅速,并保持了政治稳定和共产党的领导。这一体制运行良好,许多发展中国家开始将这种政治/经济模式视为可以效仿的模式。

More recently, however, China has established a system allowing economic freedom normally associated with capitalism with political control by the Communist party, which is normally associated with Communism. Their rates of economic growth have been fast, and they have maintained political stability and Communist party control. It has worked sufficiently well that many developing countries are beginning to see that political/economic model as one that they might follow.

民主的特征

Characteristics of a Democracy

显然,民主不可能被精确地定义,让所有人都满意。然而,我们可以澄清一些相关的概念和观点。例如,我们可以区分民主作为一种政府形式,以及民主作为一种经济和社会关系理论。我们可以描述西方在“民主”一词下包含的特征,并以此区分民主的职业与实践,民主的理想与民主的现实。

Obviously, democracy cannot be defined in any precise way that satisfies everyone. However, we can clarify some of the concepts and opinions involved. For instance, we can distinguish between democracy as a form of government and democracy as a theory of economic and social relationships. We can describe the characteristics that the West includes under the term democracy and, having done this, we can distinguish between profession and practice and between democratic ideals and democratic realities.

思考民主时,通常首先想到的是“人民主权”的概念。人民主权是指个人通过投票选择领导人的权利。一个没有人民主权的国家不可能是民主国家。我们使用“人民主权”这个复杂的术语,而不是“投票”,是因为仅仅投票本身并不能保证人民决定谁将成为他们的领导人。在判断一个政府是否真正民主时,我们必须考虑人民主权是否占主导地位,或者投票是否仅仅是一种形式问题。如果选民无法在候选人之间进行真正的选择,那么即使实行成人普选,也不足以使一个政治体制民主化。

In thinking about a democracy, the first thing that usually comes to mind is the concept of popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty is the right of individuals to select their leaders by voting for them. A state that does not have popular sovereignty cannot be a democracy. We use the complicated term popular sovereignty rather than voting because the mere act of voting does not guarantee that the people decide who will be their leaders. In deciding whether a government is really democratic, we must consider whether popular sovereignty prevails, or whether the voting is simply a matter of form. Universal adult suffrage is not sufficient to make a political system democratic if the voters have no real choice among candidates.

世界各国的民主、部分民主和非民主政府。许多国家的民主程度尚不明确,这份名单反映了作者过去十年的判断。一旦发生政变,国家可能会迅速更迭。几乎所有国家都自称是民主国家。例如,朝鲜自称是民主人民共和国

Democratic, partially democratic, and nondemocratic governments of the world. There is some ambiguity about how democratic a number of countries are, and this list reflects judgments of the authors over the last decade. Countries can change quickly if there is a coup. Almost all countries call themselves democratic. For example, North Korea calls itself the Democratic People’s Republic.

人们展示他们对人民主权的信念

People demonstrating their belief in popular sovereignty.

政治民主的根本前提是人民(而非国王、精英或阶级)拥有最终的主权。人民不仅是一切政治权力的源泉,也是他们为自身利益而建立的任何政府的主人。“被统治者的同意”不仅仅意味着被动的默许;它意味着控制的权力。为了使人民能够控制政府,必须具备(1)言论自由;(2)有效的立法机构来代表人民;以及(3)自由选举,使人民能够通过合法且和平的方式更换政府。

The essential requisite for political democracy is that the people (not a king, an elite, or a class) are ultimately sovereign. Not only are the people the source of all political power, but they also are the masters of any government they establish to serve their interests. The “consent of the governed” means more than passive acquiescence; it means the power to control. In order for the people to control the government, there must be (1) freedom of speech, (2) effective legislative organs to represent the people, and (3) free elections in which the people may change the government by legal and hence peaceful methods.

西方大多数现代民主人士认为自由或解放是民主的根本要素。但人民主权实际上意味着多数人统治,而多数人统治与个人自由的理想之间总是存在着某种紧张或冲突。这种冲突无法完全解决,但如果执政的多数人保持合理的宽容,他们只会在个人自由会严重干涉他人自由和权利的情况下才会试图限制个人自由。

Most modern democrats in the West consider freedom or liberty to be an essential element of democracy. But popular sovereignty means, in effect, majority rule, and there is always some tension or conflict between majority rule and the ideal of individual liberty. There is no way of completely resolving this conflict, but if the ruling majority is reasonably tolerant, it attempts to limit personal freedom only in situations in which such freedom would seriously interfere with the freedom and rights of others.

表明民主方法重要方面的关键词是自由讨论、迁就、妥协、节制、宽容和解。如果这些方面充分存在,那么将民主定义为多数人统治也许是可以接受的。但民主实际上意味着更多,因为在缺乏这些解决冲突的方法时,多数人会像任何绝对君主或现代独裁者一样残暴。它意味着多数人将尊重和保障少数人的权利,并允许少数人有权试图成为多数。民主意味着无论目的多么高尚,都不能成为不择手段的理由。它认为,任何目标,无论多么令人向往,都不值得以牺牲民主方法为代价。

Key words that indicate important aspects of the democratic method are free discussion, accommodation, compromise, moderation, tolerance, and reconciliation. If these aspects exist to a sufficient degree, the definition of democracy as majority rule is perhaps acceptable. But democracy really means more than majority rule, for in the absence of these methods of resolving conflict, a majority can be just as tyrannical as any absolute monarch or modern dictator. It means that the majority will respect and guarantee the rights of the minorities, and that it will allow the minorities the right to try to become the majority. Democracy means that the end, no matter how noble, cannot justify the means. It holds that no goal, however desirable, is worth the price of sacrificing democratic methods.

个人的民主观念每一个哲学、社会和政治体系都基于对人性的某些假设。如果不了解政治体系对人及其与社会和政府的关系所做的假设,就无法理解它。民主的假设与独裁统治的假设截然不同。并非所有民主假设都能得到科学论证,但它们都是民主信仰和民主理想的一部分。如果没有这些假设,民主就无法成功运作,因为没有任何其他政府体制如此信任普通人,或如此依赖普通人来取得成功。民主要求普通民众对自己行使主权,维护自由,并运用必要的判断力来确保良好政府的福祉。

Democratic Concept of the Individual Every philosophical, social, and political system is based on certain assumptions about the nature of human beings, and no political system can be understood without a knowledge of the assumptions it makes about humans and their relationship to society and government. Democratic assumptions are worlds apart from those made by dictatorships. Not all democratic assumptions can be scientifically demonstrated, but they are part of the democratic faith and the democratic ideal. In the absence of these assumptions, democracy could not operate successfully, for no other system of government puts so much faith in the average person or depends so much on the average person for its success. Democracy demands that the common people exercise sovereign authority over themselves, maintain freedom, and employ the judgment needed to secure the blessings of good government.

理性与民主生活方式民主理论假设人们能够发展出一种文化,在这种文化中,个人学会倾听讨论和辩论,并试图通过理性地权衡证据来发现真理。它假设,一个人类社会是可能的,在这个社会中,人们会意识到他们无法从政府那里得到他们想要的一切,因此妥协符合每个人的利益。在一个成功的民主国家,每个重要群体都必须愿意为他人的利益做出必要的让步。

Rationality and the Democratic Way of Life Democratic theory assumes that people are capable of developing a culture in which individuals will have learned to listen to discussion and argument, and in which they will try to discover the truth by a rational weighing of the evidence. It assumes that a human society is possible in which the people will realize that they cannot get all they want from government, and that it is therefore in everyone’s interest to make compromises. In a successful democracy, every important group must be willing to make such concessions to the interests of others as are necessary

平等民主理论认为,所有人都应被视为平等,不是在能力或成就上,而是在法律地位和追求美好生活的权利上。它并不坚持人们在美貌、体魄和智力上,在金钱和道德上,或在权力和声望上平等,但它确实主张法律面前人人平等。甚至可以说,民主政府的基本假设是所有——或者至少大多数——公民都有能力做出明智的政治决策。因此,所有人都应被赋予平等的机会参与政治进程:投票、担任公职、发表意见以及努力使自己的意见占上风。没有任何一个群体被认为垄断了政治智慧。平等意味着公共法律平等地适用于所有人,并将得到公正的执行。

Equality Democratic theory holds that all humans should be regarded as equal, not in ability or in achievement, but in legal status and in their right to seek the good life. It does not insist that people are equal in beauty, brawn, and brains; in money and morals; or in power and prestige, but it does assert that all are equal before the law. It may even be said that the basic assumption underlying democratic government is that all—or at least most—citizens potentially are capable of reaching wise political decisions. It follows, therefore, that all should be given equal opportunities to participate in the political process: to vote, to hold office, to have opinions, and to strive to make their opinions prevail. No individual group is regarded as having a monopoly on political wisdom. Equality implies that public laws apply equally to all and that they will be impartially administered.

自《独立宣言》发表以来,平等的民主理想在美国得到了长足发展,并在废除奴隶制、扩大教育机会以及推动消除极端贫困的努力方面发挥了重要作用。它的工作尚未完成,也必然会永远如此,但民主所蕴含的尊重和权力的广泛共享,依赖于经济利益的广泛分配和知识启蒙的手段。进一步迈向机会平等,将使我们更接近完全实现人民控制政府的理想,并应能提高政治决策的质量。

The democratic ideal of equality has developed considerably in the United States since the Declaration of Independence was written and has played an important role in eliminating slavery, in expanding educational opportunities, and in stimulating efforts to eliminate extreme poverty. Its work is still unfinished and necessarily always will be, but the widespread sharing of respect and power that democracy implies depends on a broad distribution of economic goods and the means of intellectual enlightenment. Further movements toward equality of opportunity will bring us closer to full realization of the ideal of popular control of government and should improve the quality of political decisions.

个人至上民主哲学和民主政府首先强调个人的尊严和价值。政府和社会被认为是为个人而存在的。最佳的社会组织——最佳的政府形式——被认为是能够提升个人尊严并促进人格最充分、最丰富的发展的组织。个人被认为是社会的基本单位,所有社会机构都应服务于个人的利益。个人不应被视为手段;他们是一切存在的目的。

Primacy of the Individual Democratic philosophy and democratic government put primary emphasis on the dignity and worth of the individual. Government and society are considered to exist for the individual. The best organization of society—the best form of government—is regarded as the one that enhances the dignity of the individual and provides for the fullest and richest development of personality. The individual is considered to be the primary unit, one whose interests should be served by all social institutions. Individuals are not to be considered as means; they are the ends for which all else exists.

自由民主的首要价值观是自由和对个人人格的尊重,这些价值观为解决其他民主价值观之间明显的矛盾奠定了基础。例如,自由和平等只有在为个人人格发展创造最佳环境的情况下才会被允许和提倡。破坏社会秩序的自由是被禁止的,因为社会秩序对于充分行使促进健全人格发展的自由至关重要。严重限制多数人或少数人自由的个人或群体自由也受到限制,因为其目标是尽可能地为所有人提供自由,以便所有人都能过上充实而令人满意的生活。完全的社会平等不会被强制执行,因为这种强制执行会破坏人格发展所需的个人自由。自由与秩序之间的界限难以界定,不可避免地会存在意见分歧。

The primary values of liberal democracy are freedom and respect for the individual personality, and these values provide the basis for resolving the apparent contradictions between other democratic values. For example, freedom and equality are permitted and promoted insofar as they create the best environment for the development of individual personality. Freedom that disrupts social order is prohibited because order in society is necessary for the fullest exercise of the kind of freedom that promotes the development of wholesome personality. Individual or group freedoms that seriously limit the freedoms of either the majority or minorities are curtailed because the goal is as much freedom as possible for all, in order that all may lead full and satisfying lives. Complete social equality is not enforced, because such enforcement would destroy the individual freedom required for personality development. The line between freedom and order is a difficult one to draw, and inevitably there will be differences of opinion.

民主在何处最有效民主是一种西方意识形态。在西方,我们常常认为它是解决所有政治问题的良方。不幸的是,事实并非如此。民主要发挥作用,需要合适的环境。合适的环境包括尊重个人权利的传统、和平解决问题的承诺、相对同质的人口(其中人口的各个亚群体之间不互相敌对)、尊重少数群体权利、将民主置于宗教等其他义务之上、普遍可接受的收入和财富分配、受过教育的人口、新闻自由以及对法律的承诺。世界上许多国家并不存在这样的环境,这使得建立一个运作良好的民主国家变得困难重重,甚至完全不可能。试图强加民主而不是让其自然发展,不仅往往会失败,还会导致政府垮台,使情况变得更糟而不是更好。

Where Democracy Works Best Democracy is a Western ideology, and, in the West, we often think that it is the solution to all political problems. Unfortunately, it is not. For democracy to work, one needs the right environment. The right environment includes a tradition of respect for individual rights, a commitment to solving problems peacefully, a relatively homogeneous population (in which subgroups of the population are not antagonistic to one another), a commitment to minority rights, a commitment to democracy over other obligations such as religion, a generally acceptable distribution of income and wealth, an educated population, a free press, and a commitment to law. In many countries of the world, this environment does not exist, making the establishment of a well-functioning democracy difficult if not totally impossible. Attempts to impose democracy, rather than to let it develop endogenously, tend not only to fail, but to lead to the destruction of government, making the situation worse, not better.

民主的替代形式民主的基本要求不应与任何特定类型的政府组织相混淆。政府学学者同意政治民主有多种形式。它可以是直接民主(例如新英格兰城镇会议,每个公民都可以参加),也可以是代议制民主(所有人口众多的地区都必须采用这种民主制度)。它可以是总统制(例如美国),也可以是议会制(例如英国、加拿大和意大利)。它可以是单一制(例如英国和法国),也可以是联邦制(例如美国)。它可以存在于有成文宪法或非成文宪法的地方,但必须存在某种意义上的宪法或政府尊重的基本法。它可以存在于共和国(例如美国和法国),也可以存在于君主立宪制(例如瑞典和英国)。

Alternative Forms of Democracy The fundamental requirements of democracy are not to be confused with any precise type of governmental organization. Students of government agree that political democracy exists in many forms. It may be direct (as in a New England town meeting, which every citizen can attend) or representative (as it must be in all units with large populations). It may be presidential (as in the United States) or parliamentary (as in Britain, Canada, and Italy). It may be unitary (as in Britain and France) or federal (as in the United States). It may exist where there is either a written or an unwritten constitution, but there must be in some sense a constitution or fundamental law that the government respects. It may exist in a republic (as in the United States and France) or in a constitutional monarchy (as in Sweden and Britain).

专制

Autocracy

在前面的讨论中,你看到了“民主”一词比你想象的要复杂得多。“独裁”一词也是如此,它是指一个人或一小群人拥有或声称拥有无限权力的政府。与民主政体一样,独裁政体也有很多种形式。古代的统治者有氏族、部落、城邦和帝国。一些伟大的罗马独裁者的名字广为人知:尤利乌斯·凯撒、奥古斯都·凯撒和马可·奥勒留。希腊城邦短暂而有限的民主制度被雅典僭主庇西特拉图等人统治下的独裁政体所取代。

In the preceding discussion, you saw that the term democracy was far more complicated than you might have thought. The same is true of the term autocracy, a government in which a single person or a small group of people has or claims unlimited power. Like democracies, autocracies come in many varieties. Antiquity had rulers in the clan, tribe, city-state, and empire. The names of some of the great Roman dictators are well known: Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, and Marcus Aurelius. The short-lived and limited democracy of the Greek city-states was replaced by autocracies under men such as Pisistratus, the Athenian tyrant.

中世纪封建主义瓦解后兴起的绝对君主制,构成了20世纪法西斯主义和共产主义兴起之前常见的威权统治类型。与许多20世纪的专制政体一样,这些早期的绝对君主制也以专制统治为特征,有时甚至变得不负责任。尽管如此,许多统治者仍然建立了“民选”或“仁慈”的政府。与大多数当代专制政体不同,绝对君主制相当稳定,因为通常一个世袭统治者接替另一个世袭统治者,不会对社会带来任何根本性的变革。在现代社会中,我们通常没有绝对君主制。相反,我们通常实行有限君主制,君主只扮演礼仪性角色,在国家治理中几乎没有发言权。尽管君主制,尤其是绝对君主制,正在逐渐消亡,但仍然有超过25个国家的君主,掌握着不同程度的统治权力。英国女王伊丽莎白二世可以宣称拥有超过十五个国家作为她的王国,尽管她实际上并无实际权力。另一方面,斯威士兰、文莱、阿曼、卡塔尔和沙特阿拉伯仍然由相对专制的君主统治。

ihe absolute monarchies that emerged trom the disintegration ot teudahsm in the Middle Ages constituted the type of authoritarian rule commonly found before the emergence in the twentieth century of fascism and communism. Like many twentieth-century autocracies, these earlier absolute monarchies were marked by arbitrary rule, which at times tended to become irresponsible. Nevertheless, many of their rulers provided “popular” or “benevolent” government. Unlike most contemporary autocracies, the absolute monarchies were fairly stable because usually one hereditary ruler followed another without introducing any basic changes in society. In modern societies, we generally do not have absolute monarchies. Instead, we usually have limited monarchies in which the monarch plays a ceremonial role but has little to say in the governing of the country. Despite the trend away from monarchies, especially absolute monarchies, more than twenty-five national monarchs still remain, holding varying degrees of governing power. British Queen Elizabeth II can claim more than fifteen countries as her kingdoms, although her real power is effectively none. On the other side of the spectrum, Swaziland, Brunei, Oman, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are still ruled by relatively absolute monarchs.

二十世纪,不同国家根据不同的情况发展出了各种类型的专制政体。现存的两种基本专制政体类型是威权主义和极权主义。

In the twentieth century, various types of autocracies developed in accordance with different conditions in different countries. The two basic types of autocracies that remain are the authoritarian and the totalitarian.

专制独裁政体是指社会由独裁者或集团统治,禁止一切威胁其地位的活动。尽管这个集团残酷地捍卫其权力,但通常对不威胁其统治的活动漠不关心。他们想要统治,是因为他们喜欢统治,或者因为他们喜欢统治带来的好处,例如巨额的潜在收入。18世纪俄罗斯叶卡捷琳娜大帝时期的社会,以及20世纪

An authoritarian autocracy is one in which the society is ruled by a dictator or clique that forbids all activities that threaten its position. Although this group ruthlessly guards its power, it generally is indifferent to activities that do not threaten its rule. It wants to rule because it likes ruling or because it likes the benefits of ruling, such as the enormous potential income. The societies of the eighteenth-century Empress Catherine the Great of Russia and, in the twentieth

西班牙的弗朗西斯科·佛朗哥是过去威权专制政体的例子,非洲一些国家的军政府是现在威权专制政体的例子。

century, Francisco Franco of Spain are examples of past authoritarian autocracies, and the military juntas in some countries of Africa are examples of current authoritarian autocracies.

极权独裁统治是指试图控制个人生活方方面面的统治。极权统治者不同于专制统治者,后者不在乎学校里谁是老师,只要他或她不持有政治立场,不威胁统治者的权力就行。简而言之,“专制统治者想要的是服从,而极权统治者想要的是崇拜。”极权主义的概念直到20世纪才正式提出。原因在于,极权国家的政治权威之所以能够压倒性地占据主导地位,直到20世纪的技术能够显著扩大国家控制的潜在范围。

A totalitarian autocracy is one that wants to control all aspects of an individuals life. A totalitarian ruler is different from an authoritarian ruler who does not care who teaches in a school as long as he or she takes no political stand and does not threaten the rulers power. Put simply, “an authoritarian wants obedience; the totalitarian wants worship.” The concept of totalitarianism was not formally introduced until the twentieth century The reason is that overwhelming dominance of the political authority emanating from a totalitarian nation was not possible until twentieth-century technology succeeded in significantly increasing the potential scope of the states control.

大多数极权主义独裁政权都建立在意识形态之上。凭借这种意识形态,他们能够以建设更美好世界为目标,为其行为辩护。纳粹主义和马克思主义就是极权主义统治背后的意识形态的两个例子。

Most totalitarian autocracies are based on an ideology. With this ideology, they can justify their actions in terms of the goal of a better world. Nazism and Marxism are two examples of ideologies underlying totalitarian rule.

威权独裁政权并不一定比极权独裁政权更好或更坏。例如,威权独裁者经常掠夺国家财富,过着奢华的生活,而他们统治的人民却可能忍饥挨饿。由于极权独裁政权通常建立在意识形态之上,极权主义领导人通常对自身财富的追求远不及极权独裁政权,而更希望看到社会中的个体认同他们的意识形态。因此,在极权独裁政权下,人们的经济状况可能更好,但个人自由却更少。

An authoritarian autocracy is not necessarily better or worse than a totalitarian autocracy. For example, authoritarian autocrats often plunder their countries’ wealth, living in splendor while the people they rule may starve. Because totalitarian autocracies are generally based on ideology, totalitarian leaders are often far less interested in wealth for themselves and are more interested in seeing that individuals in their society share their own ideology. Thus, in a totalitarian autocracy people can be better off financially but have fewer personal freedoms.

为专制政体给出的辩护因为我们归类为专制政体的国家大多都声称自己是民主政体,所以为了更好地理解专制政体,我们必须考虑他们关于为什么不允许自由选举的论点。我们发现关于自由的含义的争论仍在持续。例如,一些共产主义者认为,当工人依靠企业获得工作时,他们就没有自由表达自己的意愿——他们的意愿只是资本家和权力精英意愿的表达。他们认为,共产党对政府的控制是一种临时权宜之计,是为了防止现有的既得利益集团(资产阶级)阻挠国家走向更高、更自由的阶段。该理论认为,只有接受现在对自由的某些限制,共产主义下的公民才能在未来获得真正的自由。

Justifications Given for an Autocracy Because most of the countries that we classify as autocracies claim to be democracies, to gain a better sense of an autocracy we must consider their arguments about why they do not allow free elections. Here we find ongoing debate about what is meant by free. For instance, some communists argue that when workers depend on businesses for jobs they are not free to express their own will—that their will is just an expression of the capitalists’ and power elites will. They argue that the control of a government by the Communist Party is a temporary expedient necessary to prevent the existing vested interests (the bourgeoisie) from thwarting the states movement to a higher, freer stage. The theory is that only by accepting some limitation on freedom in the present can citizens under communism achieve true freedom in the future.

同样,许多欠发达国家的独裁政权声称,他们只是看守者,如果他们不掌权,其他一些远不如他们仁慈、远不如他们致力于民主的群体就会接管,并扼杀这些国家成为民主国家的任何可能性。他们辩称,由于他们国家的环境不适合民主,他们必须维持秩序,以确保环境对民主安全。他们辩称,他们并非反民主;相反,他们是民主的捍卫者。非洲国家乌干达就是一个看守独裁的例子。乌干达总统约韦里·穆塞韦尼带领乌干达摆脱了混乱,创造了经济增长所需的稳定,同时保持了相对廉洁的政府。他努力在政府中保持包容性,但却不允许出现任何重大的政治反对派,他认为,鉴于乌干达普遍存在的种族仇恨,该国尚未准备好接受西方式的民主。这些论点最初说服了许多外部观察家,但随着穆塞韦尼继续掌权,他变得越来越专制,并监禁或以其他方式清除政治竞争对手。如此一来,他便成了更大的恶人,而非仁慈的看守者。这种两害相权取其轻的独裁论证可以追溯到托马斯·霍布斯的政治哲学,他正是以这种方式为君主制辩护。

In similar fashion, the autocracies of many underdeveloped countries claim that they are merely caretakers, that if, they were not in charge, some other group far less benevolent and far less committed to democracy would take over and eliminate any possibility of the country ever becoming a democracy. They argue that because the environment of their country is not suitable for democracy, they must preserve order so that the environment can be made safe for democracy. They argue that they are not antidemocratic; on the contrary, they are protective of democracy. An example of a caretaker autocracy is the African country of Uganda, where the president, Yoweri Museveni, led Uganda back from chaos and created the stability needed for economic growth while at the same time maintaining a relatively uncorrupt government. He tried to be inclusive in his government, but nonetheless has not allowed significant political opposition, arguing that with the ethnic hatreds that are so pervasive in Uganda, the country is not yet ready for Western-style democracy. Initially these arguments convinced many outside observers, but as Museveni stayed in power, he became more and more authoritarian, and jailed or otherwise eliminated political competitors. As he did so, he became the greater evil rather than the beneficent caretaker. This lesser-of-two-evils justification for autocracy goes back to the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, who iustified monarchy in this fashion.

埃及一直在为实现民主而奋斗

Egypt has struggled to achieve democracy.

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© www.cartoonstock.com

这些论点都有其合理性。民主也有其弱点。现代民主制度的发展是为了反映西方的文化价值观和社会制度,如前所述,这些制度移植到西方后可能无法蓬勃发展。民意本身缺乏明确的定义,而且这一概念可以被操纵。此外,民主制度在某些法律框架内运作,而这些框架在某些领域限制了个人自由。就在20世纪50年代的美国,即所谓的麦卡锡时代,1国会机构——众议院非美活动调查委员会——传唤了涉嫌共产主义者或“同路人”(朋友是共产主义者)的人。由于他们作证或拒绝作证,一些人失去了工作或无法找到工作,一些人甚至被捕入狱。最近,作为反恐战争的一部分,具有伊斯兰信仰或伊斯兰出身的个人被列为可能的恐怖主义支持者。他们可能会失去工作,甚至因与恐怖分子嫌疑人接触而被捕入狱。一些人认为,这种做法是根除恐怖主义的合理代价。其他人则认为,这践踏了个人本应神圣不可侵犯的权利。

Each of these arguments has some validity. Democracy has its weaknesses. Modern democracies were developed to reflect Western cultural values and social institutions, and, as mentioned earlier, these may not flourish when transplanted. The will of the people is not well defined and the concept can be manipulated. Moreover, democracies operate within certain legal frameworks that restrict individual liberties in certain areas. As recently as the 1950s here in the United States, during what is called the McCarthy era,1 a congressional body, the House Un-American Activities Committee, summoned people suspected of being communists or of being “fellow travelers” (having friends who are communists). As a result of their testimony, or refusal to testify, some lost their jobs or could not find work in their professions, and some were even arrested and jailed. More recently, as part of the war on terrorism, individuals of Islamic beliefs or origin are being singled out as possible terrorist supporters. They can lose their jobs, and even be arrested or jailed for having contact with suspected terrorists. Some believe that this treatment is a reasonable price to pay to root out terrorism. Others believe it has trampled on the rights of individuals that are supposed to be sacrosanct.

同样,发展中国家在民主制度的运作中也常常遇到困难。在一个拥有两种(或多种)相互独立且对立的文化的国家,民主几乎注定失败。例如,尼日利亚,其部落众多,基督教徒和穆斯林之间存在着深刻的分歧;伊拉克,其境内有库尔德人、什叶派和逊尼派;阿富汗,其部落众多;以及刚果民主共和国,其民族分裂严重。

Similarly, developing countries often have problems making democracy work. In a country with two (or more) separate and opposing cultures, democracy is almost doomed to failure. Examples include Nigeria, with its many tribes and deep divisions between the Christians and Muslims; Iraq, with the Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis; Afghanistan, with its many tribes; and the Democratic Republic of Congo, with its many ethnic divisions.

西方国家近年来在亚洲、非洲和拉丁美洲推行自由民主的努力令人失望。然而,西方领导人需要认识到并接受,将典型的西方民主模式强加于非西方社会并非易事,因为非西方社会拥有截然不同(且往往截然相反)的文化和社会政治特征。因此,将一个国家归类为专制国家并不一定意味着它不好;而是意味着它不像西方民主国家那样响应民意。

Western countries have been frustrated with recent efforts to promote liberal democracy in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. However, the leaders in the West need to realize and accept that it is difficult to impose the typical Western model of democracy on non-Western societies, which possess distinct (and often contrary) cultural and sociopolitical characteristics. Therefore, classifying a country as an autocracy does not necessarily mean it is bad; it means it is not responsive to the will of the people in the same way as Western democracies.

专制与权力如前所述,专制政府是指独立于公民意志之外的政府。它可能会或可能不会违背其统治者的意愿行事。值得注意的是,在专制政体下,人民要求政府问责的手段有限。政府的统治权并非取决于多数人的支持,而是源于权力,而权力本身就是威权主义专制政体的目标。然而,即使在专制政体下,失去人民支持的领导人也很难继续掌权。

Autocracy and Power As we stated earlier, an autocracy is a government that exists independently of, or beyond, the will of its citizens. It may or may not act contrary to the wishes of those it governs. It is important to note that, in an autocracy, the people have limited means of calling the government to account. Its right to rule does not depend on majority support but, rather, derives from power that for authoritarian autocracies can be an end in itself. However, even in an autocracy, a leader who has lost the support of the people may find it difficult to stay in power.

“坦率地说,它并不比任何其他形式的政府更好或更坏。”

“Frankly,its no better or worse than any other form of government.”

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© www.cartoonstock.com

1989年,罗马尼亚的独裁统治被戏剧性地推翻。冷战期间,尼古拉·齐奥埃斯库(Nicolae Ceau§escu)残酷地统治着罗马尼亚,并犯下了多起侵犯人权的罪行。20世纪80年代末,民主运动的浪潮席卷东欧,罗马尼亚成为推翻独裁政权的大规模起义的舞台。1989年12月16日,在蒂米什瓦拉市数百名抗议者丧生后,齐奥埃斯库宣布国家进入紧急状态。抗议浪潮迅速蔓延至整个罗马尼亚,人们公开游行到首都布加勒斯特,要求解职齐奥埃斯库。军队加入了叛乱,1989年12月22日,一个自称“民族拯救阵线”的组织宣布推翻了政府。随后,仍然效忠独裁者的安全部队与新政府之间发生了血腥冲突。救国阵线控制了局势,齐奥伊杰斯库和他的妻子被捕。经过快速审判,他们被判犯有种族灭绝罪。并于1989年12月25日被处决。同日,叛乱领袖扬·伊利埃斯库宣誓就任罗马尼亚新总统。1991年,新宪法确立了总统和立法机构由民选产生的制度。

A dramatic overthrow of an autocratic dictator occurred in Romania in 1989. Nicolae Ceau§;escu had ruthlessly governed Romania during the Cold War and was responsible for numerous human rights violations. When the tide of the pro-democracy movement engulfed eastern Europe in the late 1980s, Romania was the stage for a massive revolt against the incumbent dictatorship. On December 16, 1989, Ceau^escu declared a state of emergency after hundreds of protestors died during demonstrations in the city of Timisoara. The wave of protest spread rapidly throughout Romania and people openly marched into the capital, Bucharest, demanding Ceau^escu’s dismissal. Army units joined the rebellion and on December 22, 1989, a group calling itself the National Salvation Front announced that it had overthrown the government. A bloody conflict followed between security forces still loyal to the dictator and the new government. The National Salvation Front gained control and Ceauijescu and his wife were captured. After a speedy trial, they were found guilty of genocide and were executed on December 25,1989. On the same day, Ion Iliescu, the leader of the rebellion, was sworn in as the new president of Romania. In 1991, a new constitution set up a system by which the president and the legislature are elected by popular vote.

对于威权独裁政权来说,权力本身就是目的(也可能是个人致富的工具),他们无需寻求其他正当理由;而对于极权独裁政权来说,权力几乎总是达到更高意识形态目的的手段。人们普遍认为,统治精英拥有“最优秀的头脑”、“最优秀的血统”、“最高的政治洞察力”和“统治能力”。2独裁者并不指望民众知道什么对他们有利;他们告诉民众什么是最好的,并希望民众相信。如果民众不相信,独裁者仍然可以尝试去做对他们有利的事情。当然,他们也可以倾听民意,实现民意,要么是因为他们认为这是正确的做法,要么是因为他们害怕起义或政变。因此,我们可以拥有对公意负责的独裁政权。它们之所以是独裁政权,是因为是否负责的决定权在于统治者,而不是民众。

Whereas for authoritarian autocracies power is an end in itself (and possibly a tool for personal enrichment), and they need claim no other justification, for totalitarian autocracies the power is nearly always a means to a higher ideological end. There generally is some belief that the ruling elite possesses the “best brains,” the “best blood,” the “highest political insight,” and the “capacity to rule.”2 Autocrats do not expect people to know what is good for them; they tell the people what is best and hope the people will believe it. If the people do not believe it, the autocrats can try to do what is good for them anyway. Of course, they can also listen to the people and carry out popular wishes, either because they believe that is the right thing to do or because they fear an uprising or a coup. Thus, we can have autocracies that are responsive to the general will. They remain autocracies because the decision to be responsive rests with the ruler, not the people.

专制政体的特征第一次世界大战后上台的极权主义专制政权的核心特征,是其控制个人和私人团体全部生活的政策。他们竭尽所能,使国家能够有效地控制一切社会活动。民主制度试图最大限度地扩大私人自由,而极权主义却将这种自由限制得非常严格。极权政府试图为国家目的而管制生活的方方面面。资本与劳动、新闻与宗教、家庭与兄弟组织、工作与娱乐、个人与社会——所有这些都受到严格的控制,旨在促进普遍福利,增强国家的权力和威望。

Characteristics of an Autocracy The central characteristic of the totalitarian autocracies that came into power after World War I was their policy of controlling the total life of individuals and private groups. They employed whatever devices they could to make possible the effective control by the state of all social activity. The sphere of private freedom, which democracy attempts to maximize, is narrowly restricted by totalitarianism. Totalitarian government attempts to regulate all of life for state ends. Capital and labor, press and religion, family and fraternal organizations, work and play, individuals and society—all are subject to strict controls designed to promote the general welfare and to enhance the power and prestige of the state.

对党和国家的忠诚极权独裁政权要求对党和国家绝对的忠诚和服从。法西斯理论颂扬和推崇国家。某些形式的共产主义颂扬社会革命,要求个人完全献身于共产党的目标。但在这两种制度下,政党都直接控制政府并决定政府的政策。例如,极权共产主义国家就是执行共产党政策的工具。法西斯主义和极权共产主义都要求个人在与党或国家利益发生冲突时,将自身利益置于党或国家的利益之下。3近年来,欧洲出现了法西斯主义可能复苏的迹象,法国、德国、意大利和俄罗斯的极端政党取得了相对成功。截至 2021 年,匈牙利和波兰等欧洲国家被认为倾向于建立一个更加专制的潜在法西斯政府。

Loyalty to the Party and the State Totalitarian autocracies demand complete loyalty and obedience to the party and the state. Fascist theory glorified and exalted the state. Some forms of communism exalt the social revolution and require of the individual complete dedication to the objectives of the Communist Party. But under both systems, the political party has direct control of the government and determines what government policy will be. Totalitarian communist states, for example, are the instrument for carrying out the policies of the Communist Party. Both fascism and totalitarian communism demand that individuals, where there is any conflict, subordinate their own interests to those of the party or the state.3 In recent times, there were signals of a possible resurgence of fascism in Europe, with the relative success of extremist parties in France, Germany, Italy, and Russia. As of 2021, European countries such as Hungary and Poland were seen as leaning back toward a more authoritarian potentially fascist government.

领袖统治民主强调宪政和法治;而专制政体往往较少强调法治,而更多地强调领袖统治。直到1215年,英国都是一个完全的专制政体,没有任何法治来限制统治者的权力。那一年,英国通过了《大宪章》,迫使约翰国王同意自由人​​享有不可侵犯的权利和自由。约翰国王接受《大宪章》后,他的权利受到限制,英国从专制政体迈向民主政体。如前所述,专制政体各不相同,国家之间也各不相同。然而,在专制政权权力强大,统治者或执政党对公民的意愿置之不理的地方,独裁者可以任意改变政治规则以适应一时的目的;任何法律或既定程序都不得干涉当权者的继续存在和绝对统治。在这种情况下,生命、自由和财产都没有保障,因为一个人可能未经任何真正的审判就因虚假指控被判有罪。

Rule by Leaders Democracy emphasizes constitutionalism and rule by law; an autocracy is often characterized less by the rule of law and more by the rule of leaders. Until 1215, England was a complete autocracy and no rule of law limited the rulers power. In that year England adopted the Magna Carta, or “great charter,” which forced King John to agree that free men had rights and liberties that could not be trampled on. After King John accepted the Magna Carta, his rights were limited, and England took a step from autocracy to democracy. As we have stated, autocracies differ from one another, and so do countries. However, where the power of the autocracy is strong and the ruler or ruling party unresponsive to the wishes of the citizens, the autocrat can change the political rules arbitrarily to meet the purposes of the moment; no law or established procedure is permitted to interfere with the continued existence and absolute rule of the power holders. Under such circumstances, life, liberty, and property are insecure, for a person may be found guilty on false charges without any genuine trial.

一党垄断专制政体渴望垄断控制权;它通常不容忍任何有组织的反对派,但有时会利用政党。现存的、纪律严明的政党最初可能是一个争夺议会控制权的传统政治团体。然而,一旦掌权,它就失去了私人性质,成为国家的官方控制机构。它所服务的目的与民主国家的政党截然不同。它不为人民提供任何选择,也不给予他们参与公共政策制定的机会。它的目的是满足专制领导人及其追随者的组织需求。它为统治者与人民之间的密切联系提供便利,传播党的路线,并为了统治者的利益控制和约束人民。它可能像在中国一样,拥有提名候选人的合法垄断权。无论其法律地位如何,国家政党都会执行专制领导人的意志,并阻止人民组建有效的合法反对党来挑战现任统治者。因此,党实际上就成为国家的代名词;党的人员、政策和计划就成为国家的人员、政策和计划。

One-Party Monopoly Autocracy desires a monopoly of control; it generally tolerates no organized opposition, but it sometimes makes use of a political party. The one highly disciplined party that exists may have begun as a traditional political group struggling for parliamentary control. Once in power, however, it loses its private character and becomes the official control agency of the state. The purposes it serves are very different from those served by parties in a democracy. It offers the people no alternatives and it gives them no opportunity to participate in the formulation of public policy. Its purpose is to serve the organizational needs of the autocratic leaders and their followers. It provides for close contact between the rulers and the people, for the dissemination of the party line, and for the control and regimentation of the people in the interest of the rulers. It may, as in China, possess a legal monopoly on the power to nominate candidates. Regardless of its legal position, the state party carries out the will of the autocratic leaders and prevents the people from forming an effective legal opposition party to challenge the present rulers. Thus, the party becomes in practice synonymous with the state; its personnel, policies, and programs become those of the state.

受控的新闻界领导人若想在不诉诸选举的情况下维持统治,往往会发现有必要控制新闻界和其他媒体,以确保民众对其政权的支持。宣传是国家控制新闻界并构建面向民众的信息流,以美化国家形象的产物。极权独裁政权通常会使用精心设计的宣传机器,旨在通过思想上的整合来获得民众的支持。民众被剥夺了了解问题任何其他方面的权利。由于这些原因,独裁政权通常拥有强大的公众支持,但如果没有新闻自由和个人言论自由,很难说即使人们拥有更广泛的选择,这种支持是否还会存在。

A Controlled Press If a leader is to maintain control without resorting to elections, she or he often finds it necessary to control the press and the other media to ensure popular support for the regime. Propaganda is the product of the state controlling the press and structuring the flow of information to the people in order to make the state look good. Totalitarian autocracies often employ an elaborate propaganda machine designed to secure mass support through intellectual conformity. The people are denied the privilege of hearing any other side of an issue. For these reasons, autocracies often have strong public support, but without a free press and freedom of expression for individuals it is difficult to say whether that support would exist if people were offered a wider range of choices.

共产主义、法西斯主义和专制主义想到专制主义,我们常常会想到共产主义和法西斯主义,因为共产主义和法西斯纳粹主义这两个词有时被用作极权专制的同义词。这多少有点误导,因为共产主义和法西斯主义并非真正的政府类型。相反,它们是不同的社会、经济和政治理论体系,却产生了性质相似的极权主义政府。它们之间的差异主要体现在细节和意识形态上,但正如我们在本章开头所述,意识形态差异至关重要。

Communism, Fascism, and Autocracy When thinking of autocracy, we often think of communism and fascism because the terms communism and fascist Nazism have sometimes been used synonymously with totalitarian autocracy. This is somewhat misleading because communism and fascism are not really types of government. Rather, they are different systems of social, economic, and political theory that have produced totalitarian governments of a similar character. The differences between them are largely matters of detail and ideology, but as we stated at the beginning of the chapter, ideological differences are important.

在共产主义制度下,极权主义被认为是暂时的,共产党的统治被认为是社会迈向更高阶段的过渡,在这个阶段,“国家将消亡”,因为真正的平等和自由已经实现,极权统治不再具有任何功能。法西斯主义最初是为了对抗共产主义而发展起来的意识形态,它并不认为自己只是一个阶段;它认为自己是一个能够抵御一切攻击的完整体系。(德国法西斯纳粹主义创始人阿道夫·希特勒宣称他建立的第三帝国将持续一千年——但它只持续了不到二十年。)

Under communism the totalitarianism is meant to be temporary, and rule by the Communist Party is said to be a transition toward a higher stage of society in which “the State will wither away” because true equality and freedom have been achieved and totalitarian rule no longer has any function. Fascism, originally developed as an ideology to combat communism, does not see itself as a mere stage; it sees itself as a complete system capable of withstanding all assaults. (Adolf Hitler, the German founder of fascist Nazism, proclaimed that the Third Reich, which he established, would last a thousand years—it lasted less than twenty.)

希特勒统治下的德国体现了法西斯理论

© CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

Hitler’s Germany embodied fascist theory.

© CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images

法西斯主义作为对共产主义的回应而发展起来,揭示了意识形态给社会带来的问题。共产主义的目标(按需分配,量力而行)听起来崇高,但当这种意识形态与民主意识形态发生冲突时,一方必须做出让步。在20世纪30年代,共产主义思想家认为民主意识形态必须做出让步。一旦民主国家中的一个群体不再接受民主意识形态,其他群体就越来越难以接受民主意识形态对他们施加的限制。例如,如果你在玩牌,而你的对手作弊,那么到了某个时候,你很可能也会作弊,或者干脆放弃玩牌。在20世纪20年代和30年代,法西斯主义者认为,由于共产主义者不按规矩办事,规则,法西斯分子也不必遵守规则。在德国,这种观点占了上风,德国为了“保护自己免受共产主义侵害”而变成了法西斯国家。最终的结果是第二次世界大战。

The development of fascism in reaction to communism shows the problem that ideologies present to society. The goals of communism (to each according to his needs; from each according to his abilities) sound noble, but when that ideology conflicts with a democratic ideology, one or the other must give. In the 1930s, communist ideologists argued that the democratic ideology must give. Once one group in a democracy no longer accepts the democratic ideology, it becomes more and more difficult for other groups to accept the limitations democratic ideology places on them. For example, if you’re playing cards and the person you’re playing with cheats, at some point you are likely either to cheat too or to quit playing. In the 1920s and 1930s, fascists argued that because communists were not playing by the rules, fascists didn’t have to play by the rules either. In Germany that argument carried the day, and Germany became a fascist state to “protect itself from the communists.” The ultimate result was World War II.

图 14.2专制政权的延续

Figure 14.2Continuum of autocracies.

法西斯主义和共产主义常常被视为光谱的两端——左翼是共产主义,右翼是法西斯主义。最好将其想象成一个圆圈,如图14.2所示。圆圈的顶端是没有任何意识形态承诺的独裁政权。沿着圆圈的左侧一直走到底部,就是共产主义,而沿着圆圈的右侧则最终到达法西斯主义。因此,几乎位于底部,但又不完全相交的,是共产主义者和法西斯主义者。

Often fascism and communism are seen as opposite ends of the spectrum—communism on the left and fascism on the right. It is better to think of a circle, as depicted in Figure 14.2. At the top of the circle are autocracies without any ideological commitment. Traveling all the way around the left side of the circle to the bottom would bring us to communism, and tracing around the right side would end in fascism. Thus, almost at the bottom, but not quite touching, are communists and fascists.

政府远非简单

Governments Are Far From Simple

读完第一章关于政治制度的内容后,我们更容易理解前最高法院法官费利克斯·弗兰克福特为何会抨击沃伦·哈丁总统“政府毕竟是一个非常简单的东西”的观点。政府远非如此简单。理解政府的作用不同于理解数学或逻辑。政府是一门艺术,尽管政府的目标可能始终如一,但实现这些目标的手段却可能随着时代的变迁而变化。

Having come to the end of this first chapter on political systems, we are in a better position to see why a former Supreme Court justice, Felix Frankfurter, attacked President Warren Hardings view that government, after all, is a very simple thing. Government is far from simple. Understanding the role of government is not like understanding mathematics or logic. There is an art to government, and although the goals of government may remain constant, the means of achieving those goals may vary with the temper of the times.

我们可以继续讨论政府的性质,但通过分析例子,你会学到更多。

We could go on about the nature of governments, but you’ll learn far more by considering examples.

学习回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 政府的五项主要职能是维护内部秩序和外部安全、确保正义、保障个人自由、规范个人行为和促进公共福利。
  • Five primary functions of government are maintaining internal order and external security, ensuring justice, safeguarding individual freedoms, regulating individuals’ actions, and promoting the general welfare.
  • 关于政府的三种截然不同的观点是:政府是必要之恶,政府是积极的善,政府是不必要的恶。
  • Three contrasting views of government are government as a necessary evil, government as a positive good, and government as an unnecessary evil.
  • 自由主义、保守主义、反动主义和无政府主义的政府哲学对于政府应该有多强大有着不同的看法。
  • The liberal, conservative, reactionary, and anarchist philosophies of government differ in their view of how strong government should be.
  • 两种主要的政府形式是民主和专制。
  • The two primary forms of government are democracy and autocracy.
  • 民主的三个显著特征是言论自由、人民的有效代表和自由选举。
  • Three distinguishing characteristics of a democracy are freedom of speech, effective representation of the people, and free elections.
  • 个人的民主观念是,他或她是理性的、与所有人平等的、并且是首要的。
  • The democratic concept of the individual is that he or she is rational, equal to all others, and primary.
  • 专制统治的常见理由包括压制市场、需要临时看守、以及缺乏民主的要求。
  • Common justifications for an autocracy include the repressiveness of markets, the need for a temporary caretaker, and the lack of the requirements for a democracy.
  • 专制政体的四个特征是:忠于党和国家、领袖统治、一党垄断、新闻受控制。
  • Four characteristics of an autocracy are loyalty to the party and state, rule by leaders, one-party monopoly, and a controlled press.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 无政府主义者(259)
  • anarchists (259)
  • 无政府状态(254)
  • anarchy (254)
  • 独裁专制(265)
  • authoritarian autocracy (265)
  • 独裁统治(265)
  • autocracy (265)
  • 资产阶级(258)
  • bourgeoisie (258)
  • 共产主义(258)
  • communism (258)
  • 保守派(259)
  • conservatives (259)
  • 民主(257)
  • democracy (257)
  • 法西斯主义(257)
  • fascism (257)
  • 功能主义方法 (253)
  • functionalist approach (253)
  • 政府 (253)
  • government (253)
  • 正义(254)
  • justice (254)
  • 自由主义者 (259)
  • liberals (259)
  • 自由意志主义者(259)
  • libertarians (259)
  • 大宪章 (268)
  • Magna Carta (268)
  • 温和派 (259)
  • moderates (259)
  • 爱国者法案 (255)
  • Patriot Act (255)
  • 政治意识形态(257)
  • political ideologies (257)
  • 政治理论(257)
  • political theory (257)
  • 政治(364)
  • politics (364)
  • 人民主权 (262)
  • popular sovereignty (262)
  • 宣传 (269)
  • propaganda (269)
  • 自由基 (261)
  • radicals (261)
  • 反动派 (259)
  • reactionaries (259)
  • 极权专制(266)
  • totalitarian autocracy (266)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Question

  1. 政府有哪些职能使得它成为如此强大的机构?
  2. What are some of the functions of government that make it such a powerful institution?
  3. 区分无政府主义者和自由主义者。
  4. Distinguish between anarchists and libertarians.
  5. 美国对政府主要抱有哪三种不同态度?
  6. What three different attitudes toward government are predominant in the United States?
  7. 人们对政府应扮演的角色存在分歧的原因有哪些?
  8. What are some of the reasons people disagree over the role government ought to play?
  9. 平等对你来说意味着什么?
  10. What does equality mean to you?
  11. 您认为政府如何才能在不侵犯其他个人自由的情况下实现个人自由的理想?
  12. How do you think a government can administer the ideal of individual freedom without infringing on the freedom of other individuals?
  13. 有些政府形式主张个人自由;有些则主张个人控制。请列举每种形式的一两种意识形态,并描述你认为每种意识形态对这种政府下的公民意味着什么。
  14. Some forms of government advocate individual liberty; some others advocate individual control. Name one or two ideologies on each side and describe what you think each would mean for a citizen under such a government.
  15. 威权专制政体和极权专制政体之间有哪些区别?请列举一个分别实行这两种政体的国家,并说明你的理由。
  16. What are some of the differences between an authoritarian autocracy and a totalitarian autocracy? Name a state governed under each of these systems, and give reasons for your choices.
  17. 共产主义在哪些方面可以说是倡导自由?民主在哪些方面可以说是导致压迫?
  18. In what ways can communism be said to advocate liberty? In what ways can democracy be said to lead to repression?
  19. 什么样的政府会提供公开选举,但选票上只有一名候选人?什么样的政府会允许选民选择候选人,但投票站却驻扎着士兵?
  20. What kind of government provides open elections but with only one candidate on the ballot? What kind might give voters a choice of candidates but have soldiers stationed at the polling place?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 访问自由前沿网站http://www.ff.org/。他们的使命宣言是什么?
  2. Go to the Frontiers of Freedom website http://www.ff.org/. What is their mission statement?
  3. 请访问www.aclu.org/about-aclu。美国公民自由联盟会为三K党之类的组织辩护吗?他们这样做正确吗?
  4. Go to www.aclu.org/about-aclu. Would the American Civil Liberties Union defend entities such as the Ku Klux Klan? Are they correct in doing so?
  5. 查看www.dhs.gov/上的国土安全威胁和保护信息,最新的国家恐怖主义顾问公告或警报的内容是什么?
  6. Looking at the Homeland Security threat and protection information at www.dhs.gov/, what was the content of the most recent National Terrorism Advisor bulletin or alert?
  7. 伊迪·阿明是谁?请访问www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCSpABIwY8s观看视频。
  8. Who was Idi Amin? Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCSpABIwY8s and watch the video.
  9. 参加自由党网站www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html上的“世界上最小的政治测验” 。你的得分是多少?
  10. Take the “World’s Smallest Political Quiz” on the Libertarian Party website, www.theadvocates.org/quizp/index.html. How do you score?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • Acemoglu,Daron 和 James Robinson,《国家为何失败:权力、繁荣和贫困的起源》,纽约:Crown Business,2012 年。
  • Acemoglu, Daron, and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, New York: Crown Business, 2012.
  • 安妮·阿普尔鲍姆,《民主的黄昏:威权主义的诱惑》,纽约:企鹅出版社,2020 年。
  • Applebaum, Anne, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, New York: Penguin, 2020.
  • 阿里斯托德,《政治学》,H. Rackham 译,马萨诸塞州剑桥:哈佛大学出版社,1944 年。
  • Aristode, Politics, trans. H. Rackham, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944.
  • Diamond,Jared,《枪炮、病菌与钢铁:人类社会的命运》,纽约:WW Norton,2006 年。
  • Diamond, Jared, Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, New York: W. W. Norton, 2006.
  • 弗里德曼,托马斯·L,《经度与态度:探索 9·11 之后的世界》,纽约:法拉、斯特劳斯与吉鲁出版社,2002 年。
  • Friedman, Thomas L., Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World after September 11th, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2002.
  • 哈耶克,弗里德里希 A.,《自由宪章》,伊利诺斯州芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社,1960 年。
  • Hayek, Friedrich A., The Constitution of Liberty, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1960.
  • 希特勒,阿道夫,《我的奋斗》 {1927 年},马萨诸塞州波士顿:霍顿·米夫林,1962 年。
  • Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf {1927), Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1962.
  • 霍布斯,托马斯,《利维坦》(1651),马里兰州巴尔的摩:企鹅出版社,1982 年。
  • Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (1651), Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1982.
  • 列维茨基,史蒂文和丹尼尔·齐布拉特,《民主如何消亡》,纽约:皇冠出版社,2018 年。
  • Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die, New York: Crown Publishing, 2018.
  • 洛克,约翰,《论政府》,第二篇论文(1690 年),伊利诺伊州芝加哥:亨利·雷格纳里出版,1960 年。
  • Locke, John, Of Civil Government, Second Essay (1690), Chicago, IL: Henry Regnery, 1960.
  • 卡尔·马克思和弗里德里希·恩格斯,《共产党宣言》(1848 年),塞缪尔·H·比尔编,纽约:Appleton-CenturyCrofts,1955 年。
  • Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848), ed. Samuel H. Beer, New York: Appleton-CenturyCrofts, 1955.
  • 9/11 委员会报告:美国国家恐怖袭击委员会最终报告,菲利普·泽利科夫,委员会执行主任,纽约:WW. Norton,2004 年。
  • 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, Philip Zelikow, Commission Executive Director, New York: W W. Norton, 2004.
  • 罗伯茨,科奇,《开国母亲:养育我们国家的女性》,纽约:莫罗,2004 年。
  • Roberts, Cokie, Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised Our Nation, New York: Morrow, 2004.
  • 斯奈德,蒂莫西,《论暴政:二十世纪的二十个教训》,纽约:蒂姆杜根图书,2017 年。
  • Snyder, Timothy, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, New York: Tim Dugan Books, 2017.
  • 托克维尔,亚历克西斯,《论美国的民主》(1835 年),纽约花园城: Doubleday,1969 年。
  • Tocqueville, Alexis de, Democracy in America (1835), Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第十五世界各国政府

chapter 15Governments of the World

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-15

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-15

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 介绍法国政府的历史和主要特点
  • Give a history and describe the key features of the French government
  • 介绍中国政府的历史和主要特征
  • Give a history and describe the key features of the Chinese government
  • 介绍尼日利亚政府的历史和主要特点
  • Give a history and describe the key features of the Nigerian government
  • 介绍俄罗斯政府的历史和主要特征
  • Give a history and describe the key features of the Russian government
  • 介绍沙特阿拉伯政府的历史和主要特征
  • Give a history and describe the key features of the Saudi Arabian government

政府背后的理念是一回事,而这些理念在实践中如何运作又是另一回事。本章将尝试通过对五个政府——法国、中国、尼日利亚、俄罗斯和沙特阿拉伯——的简要描述,将上一章的理念具体化。我们这样做的目的并非让您成为这些政府的专家,而是向您展示每个国家发展的历史背景如何塑造了其特定的政府形式,并展示独裁政体和民主政体之间存在的巨大差异。

The ideas behind governments are one thing—how the ideas work in practice is another. In this chapter we try to give some concreteness to the ideas of the previous chapter by providing a brief description of five governments: France, China, Nigeria, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Our goal in doing so is not to make you an expert on these governments, but to show you how the historical context within which each country developed has shaped its specific form of government, and to demonstrate how much variance there is among both autocracies and democracies.

法国政府

French Government

法国,这个民主重生的国家,是我们探讨其他政府的良好起点。法国现行政府体制是对绝对君主制的回应,而这种绝对君主制对十八世纪不断变化的社会条件——尤其是新兴的中产阶级——变得麻木不仁。巴士底日相当于美国的七月四日,是为了纪念攻占巴黎巴士底狱的事件。法国人每年7月14日都会庆祝巴士底日。

France, the country where democracy was reborn, is a good country with which to begin our consideration of governments besides our own. The current system of French government developed in reaction to the absolute monarchy that had become nonresponsive to the changing social conditions of the eighteenth century—specifically, the emerging middle class. Bastille Day is the equivalent of our Fourth of July and commemorates the storming of the Bastille prison in Paris. The French celebrate it every year on July 14.

1789年攻占巴士底狱标志着人民的起义——法国大革命,即法国反抗君主制和贵族统治的起义,从1789年持续到1799年——并导致了十年的混乱和恐怖,革命者摧毁了国家的政治结构和其他社会制度,但没有重建它们。独裁者拿破仑·波拿巴掌权后,混乱结束了。虽然拿破仑逆转了民主化进程,使法国重新回归独裁统治,但在他的统治之后,法国逐渐摆脱了独裁统治,走向了自由议会制,这正是今天法国政府的特征。1871年,法国在与德国的短暂战争中战败后,普法战争结束后,专制统治的一切残余都被终结,法兰西民主共和国成立。

The storming of the Bastille in 1789 marked an uprising of the people—the French Revolution, the revolt in France against the monarchy and aristocracy, lasting from 1789 to 1799— and led to a decade of chaos and terror, with the revolutionaries tearing down the political structure and other social institutions of the country but not replacing them. This chaos ended when dictator Napoleon Bonaparte took control. Although Napoleon reversed the process of democratization and returned France to an autocracy, after his reign there was a gradual evolution away from autocracy and toward a liberal parliamentary system that characterizes the French government today. In 1871, after France was defeated in a short war with Germany, the Franco-Prussian War, all vestiges of autocracy were ended, and the democratic French republic was established.

法国总统埃马纽埃尔·马克龙。 © Frederic Legrand— COMEO/Shutterstock.com

Emmanuel Macron, the president of France. © Frederic Legrand—COMEO/Shutterstock.com

尽管法国各共和国一直都有成文宪法,但法国宪法从未像美国宪法那样牢固确立。事实上,自1789年革命以来,法国共和政府已颁布了十六部宪法。不过,它们之间有一定的连续性,现行宪法参考了《人权宣言》(http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp),该宣言是1789年成文宪法序言的一部分。

Although the republics of France have always had a written constitution, the French constitution has never been as firmly established as the US Constitution. In fact, there have been sixteen constitutions since the revolution of 1789. There is some continuity, however, and their present constitution refers to the Declaration of the Rights of Man (http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp), part of the preamble to the original constitution written in 1789.

由于缺乏稳定的宪法,法国人对法律的看法与美国人不同。在美国,对很多人来说,法律就是法律;法律就是真理。而对法国人来说,法律仅仅是他们赖以生存的技术规则。区别并不在于两国实际发生了什么——两国都有人违法。在美国,如果你违法(例如逃税),你可能会感到内疚。而在法国,人们常常以违反那些他们认为只是规则的人制定的规则而自豪,而这些人上周制定了不同的规则,下个月还会制定不同的规则。

The lack of a stable constitution has made the French people regard laws differently than they are regarded in the United States, where for many people the law is the law; the law is right. For the French people, laws are simply technical rules under which they live. The difference is not so much in what actually happens in each country—in both some people break the law. In the United States, if you break the law (for example, by evading taxes), you probably feel guilty about it. In France, people often are proud of having broken what they regard as mere rules made by people who made different ones last week and will make still different ones next month.

法国议会制度

The French Parliamentary System

法国现在处于所谓的第五共和国的统治之下。每个共和国都有不同的宪法。自1871年建立第三共和国以来,法国一直实行改良的议会制,效仿英国的议会制。法国政府和政治最显著的特点或许就是其不稳定性。在第三共和国(1871-1940)的七十年间,法国有过一百多任总理,每任任期都不到八个月。这是由于政党众多以及立法机构成员不愿妥协造成的。二战后于1946年建立的第四共和国比第三共和国更加糟糕。作为回应,1958年9月28日,在国家濒临内战之际,第五共和国宣布……

France is now organized under what is called the Fifth Republic. Each of its republics has had a different constitution. Ever since the Third Republic, established in 1871, France has had a modified parliamentary system, modeled after the British parliamentary system. Perhaps the most distinctive aspect of French government and politics has been their instability. During the seventy years of the Third Republic (1871-1940), France had more than a hundred prime ministers, each one holding office less than eight months. This occurred because of the many political parties and the unwillingness of the members of the legislature to compromise. The Fourth Republic, established in 1946 after World War II, was even worse than the Third Republic. In response, on September 28, 1958, with the country on the brink of civil war, the Fifth

共和国成立。在第五共和国,议会对不信任动议进行投票要困难得多。不信任动议一旦通过,就意味着总理不再获得议会支持,必须通过选举产生新政府。信任投票是一项正式且具有宪法约束力的动议,表明议会仍然支持现任政府和总理。

Republic was instituted. In the Fifth Republic, it is much more difficult for the parliament to vote on a censure motion, a motion that, if successful, means the prime minister does not have the support of parliament and a new government must be formed via elections. A vote of confidence is a formal and constitutionally binding motion indicating that parliament still supports the current government and premier.

法国政府的立法机构每五年选举一次,由两院组成:国民议会,其成员由所有年满十八岁的公民直接选举产生;参议院,由选举团选举产生,在农村地区拥有比参议院更强的代表性。当两院发生分歧时,国民议会将拥有优先权。然而,与美国国会相比,这两个立法机构的权力都不大。一旦选出行政官员,行政部门在很多情况下既可以立法,又可以执行法律。行政部门的权力是第五共和国做出的改变,由于前几届政府非常不稳定,这一改变被接受。

The legislative branch of French government is elected every five years and consists of two houses: the National Assembly, whose members are elected directly by all citizens over age eighteen, and the Senate, which is chosen by an electoral college and provides stronger representation for rural areas than does the other house. When there is disagreement between the two houses, the National Assembly takes precedence. Compared with the US Congress, however, neither of these legislative bodies has significant power. Once having elected executive officers, the executive branch can in many cases both legislate and carry out the laws. The strength of the executive branch was a change made in the Fifth Republic and accepted because the previous governments had been so unstable.

法国行政部门

The French Executive Branch

法国政府行政部门有两位领导人:总理和总统。与许多议会制国家不同,法国两位领导人都拥有相当大的权力。总统是国家元首和政府首脑。他/她每五年由民众直接选举产生。总统任命总理,并共同选定内阁。

The executive branch of the French government has two leaders: a prime minister and a president. Unlike many parliamentary systems, in France both leaders wield considerable power. The president is the head of state and the executive head of government. He or she is elected every five years by direct popular vote. The president appoints the prime minister, and together they choose the cabinet.

2017年,独立中间派人士埃马纽埃尔·马克龙赢得总统大选。他支持欧盟和商业,但最重要的是,他展现出自己是法国传统政治结构之外的人。他不属于任何传统的法国政党,并承诺改变法国的政治运作方式。2017年法国总统大选的两位领跑者分别是马克龙和极右翼候选人玛丽娜·勒庞,显然人们对现任政府的政治精英日益不满。尽管2020年面临新冠疫情的挑战,但马克龙的总统任期仍然广受赞誉。这种满足感在2021年开始消退,预计2022年法国总统大选将竞争激烈。

In 2017, an independent centrist, Emmanuel Macron, won the presidency. He was pro-EU and pro-business, but most of all he presented himself as someone outside of France’s traditional political structure. He was not associated with any traditional French party, and he promised a change in the way politics was conducted in France. With the two front-runners of France’s 2017 presidential election being Macron and the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, it was evident that there is a growing dissatisfaction with the existing government’s political elite. Despite the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, Macron was lauded for his presidency. That satisfaction began to fade in 2021, and the 2022 French presidential election was predicted to be competitive.

中国政府

Chinese Government

由于其在世界范围内日益重要的军事和经济地位,中国政府的讨论至关重要。它与本章中描述的其他政府不同,它是一个共产主义专制政权,我的意思是它由共产党统治。说它由共产党统治,并非指中国没有国家政府;它确实有。这只是说,有一个与中国政府并行的共产党组织,主导和控制着国家的一切活动。这意味着,要了解中国政府,就必须了解共产党的组织结构。

Because of its growing importance in the world, both militarily and economically, Chinas government is crucial to discuss. It differs from other governments described in this chapter in that it is a communist autocracy, by which I mean that it is run by the Communist Party. To say that it is run by the Communist Party is not to say that China does not have a state government; it does. It is only to say that there is a parallel Communist Party structure that dominates and controls what the state does. This means that to understand the Chinese government, one must understand that Communist Party structure as well.

我首先简要讨论中国政府的历史,以了解现代中国政府的文化背景。然后,我将回顾中国政府的近代史。最后,我将探讨共产党的组织架构,并最终探讨两者在实践中的互动方式。

I start with a brief discussion of Chinese governmental history that contextualizes the cultural setting for the modern Chinese government. Then I look at the recent history of the Chinese state government. Finally, I look at the Communist Party structure, and conclude with a discussion of how the interaction works in practice.

中国政府史

Chinese Governmental History

中国历史悠久,远超大多数西方政府的历史;中国朝代可追溯至公元前2070年。这些朝代本质上是君主专制政体,皇帝以不同程度的控制力统治着中国的各个王国。由于中国幅员辽阔,民族众多,因此距离北京的中央统治集团越远,统治权就越有限。

China has a long and deep history that goes back far beyond most Western governmental histories; Chinese dynasties go back to 2070 BC. These dynasties were essentially royal autocracies in which emperors ruled the kingdoms of China with varying degrees of control. Because China has always included a large area with many different ethnic groups, that rule was often limited the further one got away from the central ruling group in Beijing.

中国政府史与西方政府史有着重要区别。中国拥有数千年的领土完整历史;而欧洲政府则分裂成多个较小的自治国家,例如德国或法国,如今欧洲正试图通过欧盟将这些国家重新统一起来。自公元前2000年以来,历代王朝都声称统治着整个中国领土。有些王朝击败了所有敌人,独自统治;而在某些时期,则同时存在着三个甚至四个交战国,每个国家都声称整个中国是他们的领土。当一个政权推翻另一个政权,或征服所有其他分裂政府时,王朝就会更迭。至关重要的是,汉族人民在4000多年的历史中一直将自己视为一个中华民族的一部分。

Chinese governmental history differs from Western governmental history in an important way. China has a history of territorial integrity going back millennia; European government split up and divided into smaller autonomous states, such as Germany or France, which Europe is now trying to put back together with the European Union. Since 2000 BC, dynasties have claimed to rule the entirety of the territory of China. Some dynasties managed to defeat all their enemies and rule alone, while in some periods three or even four warring states, each of which claimed the entirety of China as their territory, existed at once. Dynasties changed when one group overthrew another, or conquered all the other separatist governments. The crucial point is that Han Chinese people have considered themselves part of a single Chinese nation for more than 4,000 years.

最后一个王朝是清朝,统治时期为1644年至1911年。1911年,孙中山领导的辛亥革命推翻了清朝,建立了中华民国。这个共和国政局动荡,内部斗争激烈。1925年孙中山去世后,蒋介石领导的国民党与毛泽东领导的共产党之间爆发了权力斗争。1949年,毛泽东领导的共产党获胜,国民党退居中国沿海岛屿台湾。中国从此成为一个共产主义国家,现代中国政府史由此拉开序幕。

Hie last of the dynasties was the Qing Dynasty, which ruled from 1644 to 1911, when Sun Yat-sen led a revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China. The republic was unstable, and was characterized by enormous internal fighting. When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, there was a struggle for power between the nationalist party led by Chiang Kai-shek and the Communist Party led by Mao Zedong. In 1949, Mao’s Communist Party won, and the Nationalist Party retreated to Taiwan, an island off the coast of China. It was at that time that China became a communist country, and modern Chinese governmental history begins.

中国的国家结构

Chinese State Structure

中国共产党执政后制定了临时宪法,并于1954年正式成为执政宪法。此后,宪法经过多次修改。1982年,中华人民共和国现行宪法正式颁布。该宪法至今仍是中国的执政结构,并将中国共产党置于国家之上。

After taking power, the Communist Party of China established an interim constitution, which was formalized into a governing constitution in 1954. The constitution was adjusted a number of times since then. In 1982 the current constitution of the People’s Republic of China was adopted. It remains the governing structure for China and it places the Chinese Communist Party above the state.

中国政府由立法机关、全国人民代表大会(全国人大)、国家主席、总理和国务院组成。全国人大是立法机关,国家主席是国家元首,总理是政府首脑,国务院是政府的办事机构。

The government of China consists of a legislature, the National Peoples Congress (NPC), a president, a premier, and a state council. The NPC is the legislature, the president is head of state, the premier is head of government, and the state council is the operational division of the government.

全国人民代表大会约有3000名成员,任期五年,每年开会约两周。你可能会好奇,立法机构如何应对每年仅开会两周的中国治理?答案是,它无法应对。实际上,全国人大是一个主要具有仪式性的机构,其职责是通过中国共产党做出的决定。国家主席由全国人大选举产生,但选举只是仪式性的;实际上,国家主席的人选是由共产党决定的。自2018年以来,习近平一直担任中国国家主席,并不断巩固权力。他监督通过了一项新法律,使他能够继续执政数十年。中国已将习近平指定为党的执政意识形态的“主要创始人”和领导层的“核心”。他的思想和解读将引领中国的未来,不容挑战。这赋予了他指导中国发展的巨大权力,远远超过任何西方民主国家的领导人。

The National People’s Council has about 3,000 members who are elected to terms of five years. It meets for about two weeks every year. You may wonder how the legislature can handle governing China meeting only two weeks a year, and the answer is that it does not. In effect, the NPC is a largely ceremonial body whose job is to pass decisions made by the Communist Party of China. The president is elected by the NPC, but that election is ceremonial; in practice, the person selected as president is determined by the Communist Party. Since 2018, Xi Jinping has been the President of China and he has been consolidating power. He has overseen the passing of a new law that allows him to remain in power for decades. China has designated Xi as the “principal founder” of the party’s ruling ideology and the “core” of its leadership. His thoughts and interpretations are to guide the future of China and are not to be challenged. This gives him enormous power to direct the evolution of China, far more power than any leader in a Western democracy has.

中国政府的第三个部门是国务院,由大约35至50名成员组成,他们是各国家和地方政府机构的负责人。(中国分为22个省、5个自治区和4个直辖市。)因此,国务院有点像美国政府的内阁。国务院由总统提名的总理领导。

The third branch of the Chinese government, the State Council, consists of about thirty-five to fifty members who are heads of various national and local government agencies. (The country is divided into twenty-two provinces, five autonomous regions, and four municipalities.) Thus, the State Council is a bit like the cabinet in the US government. It is headed by the premier, who is nominated by the president.

共产党控制。虽然中国的政府结构看起来有点像民主政府结构,但事实并非如此。中国共产党负责制定所有决策,共产党员几乎占据了政府内部的所有权力职位。中国共产党的这一核心地位已载入中国宪法,宪法规定共产党实际上是中国境内唯一允许存在的政党。

Communist Party Control While the governmental structure looks somewhat like a democratic governmental structure, it isn’t. The Communist Party of China makes all the decisions and Communist Party members occupy almost all the positions of power within the government. This central role of the Communist Party of China is enshrined in the Chinese Constitution, which states that the Communist Party is essentially the only political party allowed within China.

中国国家主席习近平。 © Peter Cavanagh/Alamy Stock Photo

Xi Jinping, the president of China. © Peter Cavanagh/Alamy Stock Photo

中国共产党拥有约一亿党员,实行民主集中制即允许党内讨论政策问题。但一旦党的决定作出,全体党员都应坚决拥护,不得主动反对。这被称为“讨论自由,行动统一”。

The Chinese Communist Party has about one-hundred million members and is organized under the principle of democratic centralism, which is a system that allows for discussion of policy matters within the party. But once the decision of the party has been made, all members of the party are expected to uphold and not actively disagree with the decision. It has been described as “freedom of discussion, unity of action.”

中国的实际决策权掌握在共产党的政治局手中,该委员会约有25名委员。他们监督共产党,通常同时在政府中担任要职。因此,习近平既是国家主席,又是政治局委员。政治局每月召开一次会议。由于党的“行动统一”指导方针强烈反对在决策后发表异议,因此政治局如何正式作出决策尚未明确。正因如此,我们将中国归类为专制国家,而非民主国家。

The actual decision-making power of China lies with the Communist Party’s Politburo, which is a group of about twenty-five members. They oversee the Communist Party and generally have simultaneous appointments in government. Thus, Xi Jinping is both president and head of the Politburo. The Politburo meets once a month. How they formally make decisions is not spelled out, since the “unity of action” guiding mandate of the party strongly discourages vocal dissent once a decision is made. That’s why we classify China as an autocracy, rather than a democracy.

共产党的权力有多大,可以从其2004年决定转向市场化经济中看出。当时,中国引入了

Just how much power the Communist Party has can be seen in its decision in 2004 to become a more market-oriented economy. At that time, China introduced

私有制得以确立,并允许私营企业的存在,而这两项此前都是被禁止的。中国仅仅通过对宪法进行了一些修改就实现了这一目标。这些修改承认了私有财产,并促进了非公有制经济的发展,本质上使市场经济合法化,并将中国经济从计划经济转变为市场经济。当时并没有内部公开的政治讨论。在西方式的民主国家,如果没有内部公开的讨论,如此重大的变革是不可能的。

private properly and allowed private businesses, both of which had previously been prohibited. It did this by simply making some amendments to the constitution. These amendments recognized private property, and promoted the non-public sector of the economy, essentially legitimizing the market sector of the economy and changing the Chinese economy from a command and control economy to a market economy. There was no internal public political discussion. Such a major change without internal public discussion would have been impossible in a Western-style democracy.

中国政府权力巨大,尤其是在国家层面,但如此幅员辽阔的国家,其对地方政府和地方事务的控制却十分有限。中国幅员辽阔,地理和人口结构复杂,以至于共产党内的许多地方政府官员为所欲为。他们征用土地,通常只给予极低的补偿,这引发了许多地方示威、骚乱和民众对政府的愤怒。近年来,中国经济的迅猛增长以及习近平的强有力控制,抑制了这些不满情绪。习近平出台了多项旨在减少地方政府腐败和土地征用的政策。

While the Chinese government has enormous power, especially at the national level, with such a large country, its control over local government and affairs is limited. China is so large and diverse, both geographically and in population, that many local government officials within the Communist Party done what they wanted. Their confiscation of land, often with minimal compensation, has led to many local demonstrations and riots and anger at the government. Such complaints have been stifled by the enormous growth that the Chinese economy has experienced in recent years, and by the strong control of Xi Jinping who established numerous programs reducing local government corruption and land confiscation by local governments.

尼日利亚政府

Nigerian Government

我们接下来要讨论的国家是非洲国家尼日利亚联邦共和国,它很好地展现了非洲许多前欧洲殖民地所面临的治理问题。为了理解尼日利亚的问题和政府,简要回顾一下这个国家被殖民前和被殖民的历史会有所帮助。尼日利亚的根源在于其部落各个部落都代表着独特的语言、宗教和文化融合。主要部落占据着该地区不同的地理区域,并因地域而异:北部是穆斯林部落,南部是基督教部落。这些宗教差异也与文化差异密切相关,这使得部落之间的合作变得困难。

The next country we consider, the African country called the Federal Republic of Nigeria, provides a good example of the governance problems faced by many of the former European colonies in Africa. To understand the problems and government of Nigeria, it is helpful to take a brief look at the nation’s precolonial and colonial history. The roots of Nigeria lie in its tribal foundations, with each tribe representing a unique blend of language, religion, and culture. The main tribes occupied separate geographic areas in the region and were differentiated by region: Muslim tribes in the North and Christian tribes in the south. These religious differences were tied to major cultural differences as well, which made cooperation among tribes difficult.

英国殖民之前,尼日利亚分为不同的部落地区,并细分为许多子区域。为了方便管理,英国将各个地区(其中最大的三个是拉各斯、尼日尔海岸和北方保护国)合并,形成后来被称为尼日利亚的地区。如今,尼日利亚仍然是一个拥有250多个民族的国家,他们拥有不同的语言和习俗。其官方语言是英语,旨在促进文化和语言的统一。尼日利亚的其他主要语言包括豪萨语、约鲁巴语和伊博语,以及其他500多种语言。

Before British colonization, there were distinct tribal regions with many subregions. For administrative ease the British grouped together various regions—the three largest of which were Lagos, the Niger Coast, and the Northern Protectorate—into the area that came to be known as Nigeria. Today, Nigeria remains a country of more than 250 ethnic groups with varying languages and customs. Its official language is English, which was chosen to facilitate cultural and linguistic unity. Nigeria’s other major languages are Hausa, Yoruba, and Igbo, among more than 500 others.

自建国初期——从殖民统治到第一个民主共和国的诞生,直至今日——尼日利亚的历史始终充斥着种族冲突、内战和军事统治。自1960年脱离英国获得独立以来,尼日利亚经历了三个独立的共和国,并在这些共和国解体后幸存下来。在西方列强的干预下,最新的第四共和国——希望成为这个重要非洲国家建立持久稳定政府的起点。

Since its early beginnings—through colonization to the emergence of its first democratic republic to now—the history of Nigeria has been marked by ethnic conflict, civil war, and military rule. Since gaining independence from the British in 1960, Nigeria has progressed through three separate republics and survived the aftermaths of their collapses. With intervention from Western powers, the most recent—the fourth republic—hopes to mark the starting point for a lasting stable government in this important African country.

英国的影响

British Influence

英国在奴隶贸易时期对西非产生了兴趣。皇家尼日尔公司等英国公司占领了该地区。随着这些公司的影响力逐渐增强,大英帝国也随之壮大。这种增长最终在……的建立中达到顶峰。

The British became interested in West Africa at the time of the slave trade. British-based companies such as the Royal Niger Company occupied the region. As the companies slowly gained influence, so did the British Empire. This growth eventually climaxed in the establishment of

二十世纪初,尼日利亚保护国正式成立。尽管英国政府撤销了几家公司的特许状,但其在该地区的影响力仍在持续增长。随着殖民化进程的推进,大量基督教传教士涌入,为这个以穆斯林为主的地区带来了教堂和学校。在新世纪的最初几年里,几个保护国相继建立,从南部海岸拉各斯的原据点向外扩展。

the Protectorate of Nigeria at the beginning of the twentieth century. Despite the revocation of the charters of several of the British companies, the influence of the British government in the region continued to grow. With colonization under way, an influx of Christian missionaries brought churches and schools to the predominantly Muslim region. Within the first few years of the new century, several protectorates had been established, growing outward from the original stronghold in Lagos on the southern coast.

每个保护国都由一名副总督管辖,其职责是维持秩序并为英国政府创造收入。1906年,随着拉各斯并入南方保护国,各地区逐渐走向统一。为了统一剩余地区,英国提出了几种方案。到1914年,英国奠定了尼日利亚统一的现代基础,弗雷德里克·卢加德爵士担任首任总督。他设立了一个名为尼日利亚理事会的咨询机构,由各前保护国代表组成,并仅听取非洲原住民的意见。

Each protectorate came under the authority of a lieutenant-governor, whose job was to keep order and generate revenue for the British government. Slow steps toward unification of the separate regions were taken in 1906, with the incorporation of Lagos into the Southern Protectorate. Several ideas were proposed to unify the remaining regions, and by 1914 the British had established the unified modern foundations of Nigeria, with Sir Frederick Lugard serving as its first governor. He set up an advisory body known as the Nigerian Council, which featured representation from each former protectorate and limited input from the native Africans.

与此同时,英属西非国民大会党(National Congress of British West Africa)在该地区逐渐壮大。尽管与英国政府的持续斗争未能使该组织成为立法委员会的一部分,但非洲原住民逐渐获得了更多的代表权。1922年,大英帝国批准了尼日利亚第一部宪法。然而,该宪法未能赋予所有前保护国同等的权力,而是延续了由信奉基督教的南部地区间接统治北部地区和以穆斯林为主的地区的策略。多年来,英国为统一尼日利亚南北地区做出了诸多努力。与此同时,宪法的修改,加上日益高涨的民族主义情绪,推动了国家主权的进程。

Meanwhile, the National Congress of British West Africa established itself as a growing force in the region. Though ongoing fights with the British government failed to establish this group as part of the legislative council, native Africans slowly gained more representation. In 1922, the British Empire ratified the first constitution of Nigeria. However, the constitution failed to give equal weight to all of the former protectorates, and it continued the strategy of indirect rule of the northern and predominantly Muslim areas by the Christian southern areas. Over the years, Britain made numerous efforts to unite the northern and southern regions of Nigeria. At the same time, changes to the constitution, combined with growing nationalism, led to a push toward national sovereignty.

英国统治的六十年间,尼日利亚不断争取独立。随着每一次斗争的进行,英国都允许尼日利亚地方政府拥有更大程度的自治,并制定了各种宪法,旨在证明自治的有效性。最终,尼日利亚于1960年获得独立,并建立了共和议会制政府。

The sixty years or British rule were marked by continual hghts tor independence. With each of these fights, Britain allowed greater local Nigerian self-government, and created various constitutions that were meant to demonstrate the efficacy of self-rule. Ultimately, Nigeria was given its independence in 1960, and it established a republican parliamentary system of government.

现代尼日利亚政府:第四共和国

Modern Nigeria's Government: The Fourth Republic

尽管英国的统治并非特别成功,但英国为治理尼日利亚而制定的宪法却成为现代尼日利亚国家发展的重要指南。首先,英国统治的遗产促成了立法和行政两权并存的政府的建立;其次,它促成了以英国普通法为基础的普通法体系的建立;第三,它促进了政党的诞生。简而言之,体现英国理念的宪法与尼日利亚本土传统相融合,形成了尼日利亚政府的现代架构。

Though British rule was not especially successful, the constitutions that Britain created to govern Nigeria became important guides for the development of the modern state of Nigeria. First, the legacy of British rule led to the creation of a government with both a legislative and executive branch; second, it led to the establishment of a system of common law based on British common law; and third, it spurred the creation of political parties. In short, the constitutions embodying British ideas became integrated with domestic Nigerian traditions to create the modern structure of the Nigerian government.

除中央政府外,尼日利亚还设有多个地方政府,分为36个州和774个地方政府。设立如此众多的地方政府,旨在为尼日利亚境内的众多部落提供一定程度的自治。

In addition to the national government, Nigeria has various regional governments and is divided into thirty-six states and 774 local governments. This large number of local governments is an attempt to provide a degree of home rule to the many different tribes that make up Nigeria.

尼日利亚总统穆罕默杜·布哈里。 © Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria. © Olivier Douliery-Pool/Getty Images

第四共和国可视为过渡共和国,因为权力已从第三共和国的军事统治转移到文官统治。尼日利亚实行总统制,总统既是国家元首,又是政府首脑。

The fourth republic can be considered a transition republic, as control has shifted from the military rule of the third republic to civilian rule. Nigeria uses a presidential system in which the president serves as both head of state and head of the government.

尼日利亚实行两院制立法机构。参议院有109个席位,每个州各占3席,另加首都阿布贾1席,其议员由民众投票选举产生,任期为四年。众议院有360个席位,其议员也由民众投票选举产生,任期为四年。主要政党有两个:人民民主党(PDP)和全民进步大会党(APC)。全民进步大会党是反对党联盟,成立于2015年大选前,旨在更有力地挑战当时的总统古德勒克·乔纳森。自2015年以来,全民进步大会党在两院均占有多数席位。国民议会一直维持这一立场,直到 2021 年底。然而,要求改变的呼声越来越大。

Nigeria has a bicameral legislature. The Senate has 109 seats—three from each state plus one from the capital, Abuja—and its members are elected by popular vote to serve four-year terms. The House of Representatives has 360 seats; its members are also elected by popular vote for four-year terms. There are two main parties, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC), a coalition of opposition parties created prior to the 2015 elections in order to more forcefully challenge the president at the time, Goodluck Jonathan. Starting in 2015, the APC has held a majority in both houses of the National Assembly and it remained as of the end of 2021. There were, however, numerous calls for change.

尼日利亚的法律体系由四种不同的法律体系组成:英国法、普通法、习惯法和伊斯兰教法。伊斯兰教法是一种伊斯兰法律,因其惩罚通常被西方人认为严厉而受到西方媒体的广泛关注。伊斯兰教法主要在尼日利亚北部各州实行,但正在逐渐推广到该国其他地区。尼日利亚的司法系统设有由联邦政府任命的联邦上诉法院和由总统任命成员的最高法院。

Nigeria’s legal system is composed of four distinct systems of law: English law, common law, customary law, and sharia law, which is a form of Islamic law that gets significant press in the West because its punishments are often considered harsh by westerners. Sharia is practiced primarily within the northern states of Nigeria, but it is being slowly introduced elsewhere in the country. The judicial system has a Federal Court of Appeals appointed by the federal government, and a Supreme Court whose members are appointed by the president.

尼日利亚面临的困难

Difficulties Facing Nigeria

正如英国难以治理构成该国多元文化的地区一样,尼日利亚的民选政府也同样如此。它面临着政党斗争、根深蒂固的宗教分歧以及前保护地之间缺乏凝聚力的问题。这些问题为随后的动荡和各种政府结构的不断更替埋下了伏笔。1966年的一场军事政变推翻了第一共和国,引发了内战和巨大的动荡。最终,在1979年,第二共和国成立,这次实行总统制,但在1983年,它也以政变和军事统治告终。

Just as Britain found it difficult to govern the diverse cultural areas that made up the country, so too has the elected Nigerian government. It has faced fighting among political parties, uncompromising religious division, and a lack of cohesiveness between the former protectorate regions. These problems set the stage for subsequent upheavals and constant transitioning through various governmental structures. A military coup in 1966 overthrew the first republic, which led to civil war and enormous turmoil. Eventually, in 1979, a second republic was created, this time as a presidential system, but in 1983 it, too, ended in a coup and military rule.

当时,西方国家对尼日利亚产生了兴趣,很大程度上是因为该国正成为世界上重要的石油生产国。他们在尼日利亚第三共和国的建立中发挥了作用,该共和国恢复了选举,并试图建立两党制。

At about that time, Western countries became interested in Nigeria, in large part because it was becoming an important oil-producing country in the world. They played a role in the establishment of a third republic, which resumed elections and attempted to establish a twoparty system.

1999年,尼日利亚成立第四共和国,成为一个相对稳定的民主国家。尽管第四共和国延续了前三个共和国的暴力和内乱模式,但它依然生存了下来,尽管它依然存在许多困扰前几个共和国的低效和问题。

Nigeria emerged as a somewhat stable democracy in 1999 with the creation of the fourth republic. While this republic has been marred by the same pattern of violence and civil unrest that undid the first three republics, it has survived even though it is characterized by many of the inefficiencies and problems that plagued previous republics.

近年来,尼日利亚民主发展出现了一些积极迹象。2010年,尼日利亚首位受过大学教育的平民领导人奥马鲁·亚拉杜瓦去世,副总统古德勒克·乔纳森接任。乔纳森于2011年再次当选,外界观察家认为这是一场相对自由的选举。然而,2015年,乔纳森又被前军事独裁者穆罕默杜·布哈里击败。许多人担心乔纳森的支持者会发动暴乱,拒绝接受选举结果,但乔纳森敦促他的支持者接受选举结果。他表示:“任何人的野心都比不上尼日利亚人民的鲜血。我们亲爱的国家的团结、稳定和进步比什么都重要。”他对选举结果的接受使他成为易卜拉欣奖的有力竞争者。(参见专栏)

More recently, there have been positive signs in the development of a Nigerian democracy. In 2010, Umaru Yar’Adua, the first civilian and university-educated leader of Nigeria, died and was replaced by his vice president, Goodluck Jonathan, who was reelected in 2011 in what outside observers saw as a relatively free election. He, in turn, was defeated in 2015 by a former military dictator, Muhammadu Buhari. Many feared that Jonathan’s supporters would riot and not accept the result, but Jonathan urged his supporters to accept it. He stated: “Nobody’s ambition is worth the blood of any Nigerian. The unity, stability and progress of our dear country is more important than anything else.” His acceptance of the election results made him a contender for the Ibrahim Prize. (See Box.)

布哈里的胜利标志着现任总统首次将权力移交给另一位领导人,这被视为尼日利亚民主的胜利。2019年,布哈里连任,并获得了APC党的两院多数席位。自当选以来,政府一直在努力应对尼日利亚民主面临的两大挑战:政府腐败以及名为“博科圣地”的极端伊斯兰组织的叛乱和恐怖活动。布哈里已宣布他将不会在2023年寻求连任,权力能否再次和平过渡仍有待观察。

Buhari’s victory marked the first time a sitting president had conceded power to another leader, and is seen as a victory for democracy in Nigeria. In 2019, Buhari was reelected to office, along with the bicameral majority of the APC. Since election, the administration has struggled to deal with the two major democratic challenges in Nigeria: governmental corruption and the insurgency and terrorist activities of an extreme Islamic sect named Boko Haram. Buhari has announced that he will not seek reelection in 2023, and it remains to be seen whether there is another peaceful transition of power.

推动领导人继续掌权的动力不仅来自领导人本人,还来自众多为其效力的个人——无论是私人还是公共部门——他们声望和收入都与领导人的执政息息相关。在尼日利亚尤其如此,该国很大一部分收入都与石油行业息息相关,而石油行业则由政府直接或间接控制。控制政府就等于控制石油资金的流向。

The push for a leader to remain in power is not only from the leader, but also from the large number of individuals—both private and public—who work with the leader and whose prestige and income are associated with the leader being in office. This is especially true in Nigeria where so much of the country’s income is tied to the oil industry which the government either indirectly or directly controls. Controlling government is controlling the flow of oil money.

尼日利亚政府腐败猖獗,政府的石油收入似乎从政府报告中蒸发,突然出现在政府官员的个人账户中。这导致民众对政府失去信任。博科圣地的成功部分源于这种腐败——如果人们不信任政府,他们就不会支持政府,从而滋生无法无天的现象。尼日利亚经济的不平等是博科圣地成功的另一个原因。该组织主要在尼日利亚伊斯兰聚居的北部地区活动,该地区几乎所有指标都落后于较为富裕的南部地区。博科圣地利用民众对经济状况的不满来煽动他们走向极端。这种不平等以及南北之间存在的宗教差异,给尼日利亚任何一位领导人都带来了严峻的挑战。

Government corruption is rampant throughout Nigeria, as government oil money seems to evaporate from government reports and suddenly appear in government officials’ personal accounts. This has led the population not to trust the government. Boko Haram’s success is partially due to that corruption—if people don’t trust government, they don’t support it, which creates the conditions for lawlessness. The inequality in the Nigerian economy is another reason for Boko Haram’s success. It operates mainly in the Islamic north of Nigeria, which lags behind the richer south of Nigeria in almost all measures. Boko Haram takes advantage of people’s economic grievances to radicalize them. This inequality, and the religious differences that exist between the north and the south, present serious problems for any Nigerian leader.

这段历史中有几点值得注意。首先,尼日利亚的地理区域并非自然发展而来;它是英国为了便于殖民统治而强加的。多元文化区域的融合存在问题,因为尼日利亚人通常首先将自己视为部落成员,然后才是尼日利亚公民。其次,尼日利亚拥有石油财富,这在人们看来是福,但在很多方面却是一种诅咒(这种现象通常被称为“资源诅咒”或“富足悖论”)。问题在于,石油财富创造了一种争夺的奖赏,使得尼日利亚的非产油地区难以接受国家分裂,因为分裂后他们将一无所获。与此同时,石油财富也为产油地区支持分裂提供了强有力的理由,因为分裂后他们将从石油中获益。石油财富也意味着外部利益集团将为承诺给予他们部分财富的一方提供资金。因此,尼日利亚近期政治史上的内乱可能会持续很长时间。

A couple of points are worth noting in this history. First, the geographic area that became Nigeria did not develop organically; it was imposed by the British to make colonial rule easier. The combination of diverse cultural regions is problematic because Nigerians often see themselves first as tribal members, then as Nigerian citizens. Second, Nigeria has oil wealth, which one would think is a blessing, but which, in many ways, is a curse (this phenomenon is commonly known as a “resource curse” or “paradox of plenty”). The problem is that the oil wealth creates a prize to fight for, making it difficult for Nigeria’s non-oil-producing regions to accept a breakup in the country, because then they would get none of the wealth. At the same time, that oil wealth provides a strong reason for the oil-producing regions to support a breakup because then they would reap the financial benefits from the oil. Oil wealth also means that outside interests will fund the side that promises them some of that wealth. Consequently, the civil unrest that has marked recent Nigerian political history may continue for a long time.

最后评论

A Final Comment

尼日利亚政府的历史展现了多元文化主义给民主制度带来的种种问题。民主制度要想有效运作,其人民必须拥有某些共同的价值观,其中最重要的一条就是,即使感到自己受到了不公正的对待,人民也不会诉诸武装冲突。这种价值观取决于民众的善意和信念,即相信自己掌权后,其他人不会趁机占便宜。然而,由于尼日利亚的多元化,这种善意往往并不存在,尼日利亚仍在苦苦挣扎,应对着殖民历史所造成的种种问题。

The history of the Nigerian government demonstrates the problems that multiculturalism presents for democracy. For a democracy to work, its people must share certain values, one of the most important of which is that people will not resort to armed conflict even when they feel they have been wronged. That value depends on a level of goodwill and belief that others will not take advantage of situations when they are in power. In part because of the diversity in Nigeria, that goodwill often does not exist, and Nigeria continues to struggle with the problems imposed on it by its colonial history.

俄罗斯政府

Russian Government

要了解俄罗斯现政府,我们需要了解它的历史。这段历史是由沙皇统治的中央集权的俄罗斯帝国。这个帝国不仅包括现在的俄罗斯,还包括许多周边国家和地区。第一次世界大战给俄罗斯帝国带来了严重的经济困境,并引发了政治混乱和内战。1917年,布尔什维克(俄国社会民主党中较为激进的多数派)在弗拉基米尔·列宁的领导下,接管了俄罗斯政府,并在赢得内战后建立了对国家的统治。

To understand the current government in Russia, we need to consider its history. That history is one of a centralized Russian Empire ruled by tsars. The empire included not only what is now Russia, but also a number of surrounding countries and areas. World War I created severe economic difficulties for the Russian Empire and led to political confusion and civil war. In 1917, the Bolsheviks, members of the more radical majority of the Russian Social Democratic Party, under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin took over the Russian government and, after winning the civil war, established control over the country.

1922年,列宁设计了一部联邦制宪法,将俄罗斯周边的共和国纳入其中,这些共和国此前曾是俄罗斯帝国的一部分。这部宪法标志着苏维埃社会主义共和国联盟(苏联)的成立。尽管宪法于1936年和1977年修订,但原则上与列宁1922年制定的宪法相同,直到1991年苏联解体。组成苏联的各个共和国都成为了独立国家,通过历史和松散的联邦形式联系在一起。这些前苏联国家拥有许多俄语使用者,俄罗斯至今仍将其中许多国家视为其势力范围之内。

In 1922, Lenin designed a federal type of constitution that incorporated republics surrounding Russia, republics that had previously been part of the Russian Empire. The constitution marked the beginning of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Although the constitution was revised in 1936 and again in 1977, this constitution was, in principle, the same as the one that Lenin wrote in 1922, until the fall of the USSR in 1991. The republics that made it up each became independent states, connected by history and a loose commonwealth. These former Soviet states are home to many Russian speakers, and Russia still sees many of them as within its sphere of influence.

俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京。 © Frederic Legrand—COMEO/ Shutterstock.com

President Vladimir Putin of Russia. © Frederic Legrand—COMEO/Shutterstock.com

苏联宪法和苏联政府的一个关键要素是政府与共产党之间的关系。苏联宪法第六条规定:“苏联共产党是苏联社会的领导和指导力量,是苏联政治制度和一切国家和社会组织的核心。” 共产党对苏联政府的主导控制意味着政府在很大程度上只是执行共产党制定的政策的橡皮图章和行政机构。

A key element of the Soviet constitution and the government of the Soviet Union was the relationship between the government and the Communist Party. Article 6 of the Soviet constitution stated: “The Communist party of the Soviet Union is the leading and guiding force of the Soviet society and the nucleus of its political system and of all state and public organizations.” The Communist Party’s dominant control of the Soviet government meant that the government was largely a rubber stamp and administrative institution for carrying out policies made by the Communist Party

20世纪80年代末,苏联政治体制发生了根本性变化,苏联领导人米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫推行了一系列自由化改革。这些改革削弱了共产党的权力,并引发了民族主义和经济动荡的浪潮。面对这场动乱和共产党权力的削弱,一些共产党领导人试图发动政变——即超越宪法夺取国家政权。由于前苏联军队和大多数民众的抵抗,这场政变失败了,而俄罗斯共和国总统鲍里斯·叶利钦等领导人拒绝接受政变并开始反抗。政变领导人被逮捕,苏联不复存在。俄罗斯是苏联最大、最具主导地位的国家,继承了前苏联的大部分政府和机构结构。苏联的各个加盟共和国都宣布独立。 20世纪90年代,一些加盟共和国与俄罗斯合并,成立了所谓的“独立国家联合体”,但这主要是一个象征性的组织。20世纪90年代初,前苏联所有成员国都陷入混乱,但到了90年代中期,俄罗斯新的政府架构逐渐成型。

There was a radical change in the Soviet political system in the late 1980s when Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced a number of liberalizing reforms. These reforms reduced the power of the Communist Party and unleashed a wave of nationalistic and economic upheaval. Faced with this upheaval and reduction in power of the Communist Party, a number of communist leaders attempted a coup d’ etat—an extra-constitutional takeover of a country. That coup failed because the military and a majority of the people in the former Soviet Union resisted, and leaders such as Boris Yeltsin, the head of the Russian Republic, refused to accept the coup and began a struggle against it. The coup leaders were arrested and the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Russia, the largest and most dominant state in the Soviet Union, inherited much of the government and institutional structure of the former Soviet Union. Each of the republics that had formerly been part of the Soviet Union claimed its independence. In the 1990s a number of the republics joined together with Russia in what they called the Commonwealth of Independent States, but it was primarily a symbolic organization. Chaos reigned in the early 1990s in all the countries that made up the former Soviet Union, but by the mid 1990s Russia’s new governmental structure took shape.

具体来说,俄罗斯建立了一个由总统、立法机构(即人民代表大会)和司法机构组成的政府体制。这三个政府部门权力大致相等,导致早期政策决策中出现许多僵局。1993年的新宪法赋予了总统更强的权力,但也保留了由联邦上院和国家杜马下院组成的联邦议会,并对总统权力进行制衡。

Specifically, Russia created a governmental system consisting of a president, a legislative branch, called the Congress of People’s Deputies, and a judicial branch. The three branches of government shared roughly equal powers, causing many gridlocks in policy decisions in the early years. A new constitution in 1993 created a stronger president but also maintained a Federal Assembly composed of an upper Chamber of the Federation and a lower State Duma with checks on presidential power.

2000年,弗拉基米尔·普京当选总统。在他执政期间,他一直是一位极受欢迎的总统,部分原因是他为俄罗斯带来了稳定,部分原因是他让俄罗斯人重拾了自豪感。2004年,他再次当选连任。由于总统任期不得超过两届,他无法参加2008年的选举,但他精心挑选的继任者德米特里·梅德韦杰夫几乎没有参加竞选就以压倒性优势获胜。选举结束后,梅德韦杰夫任命普京为总理。

In 2000, Vladimir Putin was elected president. Throughout his years in office, he has been an extraordinarily popular president, in part because he brought stability back to Russia, and in part because he brought pride back to being Russian. In 2004, he was elected to a second term. Because of a two-term limitation on service as president, he could not run for election in 2008, but his handpicked successor, Dmitry Medvedev, won in a landslide after hardly campaigning. After the election, Medvedev appointed Putin as prime minister.

2012年,普京和梅德韦杰夫互换了职位,普京再次竞选总统,任期六年。(自2008年大选以来,任期已延长两年。)苏联宪法允许这样做,因为理论上,梅德韦杰夫担任总统时,普京已离任。梅德韦杰夫竞选总理。两人都以较大优势获胜。虽然实际投票结果看似相对公平,但许多人认为,选举程序本身存在不公平,因为强大的反对派候选人被各种或明或暗的方式阻止参选。由于这种观点,选举后俄罗斯爆发了大规模示威活动,示威者声称选举存在舞弊行为。

In 2012, Putin and Medvedev exchanged positions, and Putin ran for president once again for a six-year term. (It had been increased by two years since the 2008 election.) This was allowed by the Soviet constitution, since technically Putin was out of office when Medvedev was president. Medvedev ran for prime minister. Both won by large amounts, and while the actual voting seemed relatively fair, many believed that the underlying process was unfair, since strong opposition candidates were prevented from running in a variety of subtle and unsubtle ways. Because of this belief, major demonstrations occurred in Russia following the elections, with demonstrators claiming that the elections were rigged.

中立观察人士认为存在一些选民舞弊行为,但不足以改变选举结果。但他们也一致认为,普京和梅德韦杰夫的成功部分是因为他们的一些最强劲的对手——他们原本可能是很有可能击败他们的候选人——因各种原因被捕或被阻止参选。对于阻止他们参选的理由的合法性存在意见分歧。因此,尽管普京目前仍然掌权并拥有相当的民众支持,但不满的暗流依然存在。当普京入侵乌克兰,试图将其重新置于俄罗斯控制之下时,这股暗流更加汹涌。

Neutral observers saw some voter fraud but not enough to change the results of the election. But they also agreed that the success of Putin and Medvedev was in part because some of their strongest opponents, who might actually have been candidates with a good chance of beating them, had been arrested for a variety of reasons or were otherwise prevented from running. Differences of opinion existed about the legitimacy of the reasons that prevented them from running. So, while Putin currently remains in power and has significant popular support, an undercurrent of discontent exists. That undercurrent increased substantially when Putin invaded the Ukraine in an attempt to bring it back under Russian control.

这一反对派运动在2018年总统大选前夕抬头,反对派候选人阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼带头发起了一场竞选活动,承诺打击腐败,缓解俄罗斯与西方之间的紧张关系。大选前两个月,纳瓦尔尼因被指控组织非官方抗议和竞选集会而被禁止成为正式候选人。作为回应,他呼吁抵制大选,认为选举存在舞弊行为,因为没有任何一位有能力挑战普京连任的候选人的名字被列入选票。

This opposition movement reared its head in the run-up to the 2018 presidential elections, with opposition candidate Alexei Navalny spearheading a campaign promising to fight corruption and decrease tensions between Russia and the West. Two months prior to the election, Navalny was prevented from becoming an official candidate on the basis of charges brought against him for organizing unofficial protests and campaign rallies. In response, he called for a boycott of the general election, arguing that the vote was rigged by the fact that no viable challengers to Putin’s reelection were allowed to have their names on the ballot.

直到2021年,普京一直拥有俄罗斯民众的强力支持。这使得他能够提出并通过宪法修正案,允许他连任数十年。能否保住总统职位取决于能否赢得选举,但俄罗斯政府对俄罗斯媒体的控制以及其监禁或以其他方式“消灭”强劲对手的能力,可以使赢得选举变得容易得多。例如,在2021年,他最强劲的对手阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼(Alexi Navalny)不知何故遭毒害,昏迷数月。俄罗斯政府声称与这起中毒事件无关,但大多数外部观察人士认为这种说法难以置信。在过去的版本中,由于俄罗斯依靠选举产生领导人,且普京拥有强大的民众支持率,我们将俄罗斯归类为威权民主国家。俄罗斯最近的事件表明,它正在演变成一个无需民众支持也能继续存在的威权体制。

Up until 2021, Putin retained strong support of the Russian population. That allowed him to propose and pass an amendment to the Constitution that allows him to continue in office for decades. Staying in office depends on winning elections, but Russian government control of the Russian press and its ability to jail or otherwise “eliminate” strong opponents, can make winning elections much easier. For example, in 2021, his strongest opponent, Alexi Navalny somehow was poisoned, placing him in a coma for months. The Russian government claimed to have nothing to do with the poisoning, but most outside observers found that claim difficult to believe. In past editions, because Russia has relied on elections to select leaders, and Putin had strong popular support, we have classified Russia and an authoritarian democracy. The latest events in Russia suggest that it is evolving into an authoritarian system that can continue without popular support.

普京在西方的受欢迎程度低于在俄罗斯,因为他试图在世界政治舞台上发挥俄罗斯的影响力。由于俄罗斯的威权主义历史,西方许多人并不认为俄罗斯是西方式的民主国家。但由于俄罗斯依靠选举产生领导人,且其领导人拥有广泛的民众支持,许多人选择称其为威权民主国家。

Putin is less popular in the West than in Russia, as he has tried to exert Russias influence on the world political scene. Because of its authoritarian history, Russia is not seen by many in the West as a Western -type democracy, but since it does rely on elections to select its leaders, and the fact that its leaders have widespread popular support, many choose to call it an authoritarian democracy.

沙特阿拉伯政府

Saudi Arabian Government

与我们之前提到的其他四个自称民主国家不同的是,沙特阿拉伯并没有这样自诩。它是一个君主制国家,为我们提供了一个威权专制的典型例子。

Unlike the other four countries we have considered, all of which call themselves democracies, Saudi Arabia makes no such claim. It is a monarchy, and it provides us with an example of an authoritarian autocracy.

沙特阿拉伯的政府相对现代化;现今的王国建于1932年。在此之前,如今的沙特阿拉伯与阿拉伯半岛的其他国家一样,是由多个部落组成的,这些部落普遍遵循伊斯兰宗教传统。各个部落以及各个部落之间,其生活都受到这些传统以及伊斯兰教主要经典《古兰经》的约束。直到20世纪,这些部落中还没有出现过一位长期统治的领袖。

The Saudi Arabian government is relatively modern; the present kingdom was established in 1932. Before that time, what is now Saudi Arabia, like the other countries in the Arabian Peninsula, was a collection of tribes generally following Islamic religious traditions. Life in the individual tribes and among the various tribes was governed by those traditions and by the Qur’an, the primary Islamic religious body of writings. Until the twentieth century, no single long-term leader emerged from this collection of tribes.

这种情况在20世纪初发生了改变,伊本·沙特征服了阿拉伯中部的大部分部落,成为贝都因部落的政治和精神领袖。在20世纪的前三分之一时间里,他不断扩张自己的统治,并于1932年建立了沙特阿拉伯王国。

That changed in the early 1900s, when Ibn Saud conquered most of the tribes in central Arabia and became the political and spiritual leader of the Bedouin tribes. He extended his authority during the first third of the twentieth century and created the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

这个王国没有成文宪法,而是依靠历史先例、古兰经和皇家法令作为指导。直到最近,这里没有立法机构,也没有政党。这是一个真正意义上的君主专制政体。但即使是君主专制也有其限度。虽然沙特没有宪法,也没有限制国王权力的法律,但古兰经和历史习俗限制了国王的行动,随着时间的推移,一种准宪法体系逐渐发展起来。统治者由王室成员从数千名成员中选出,需经一群穆斯林领袖(乌里玛)批准。乌里玛可以罢免统治者,而统治者也要依赖部落领袖的支持,最近,还要依赖重要商人的支持。需要注意的是,沙特阿拉伯不存在女性统治的问题,因为伊斯兰教对女性的看法不允许她们担任任何这样的角色。

The kingdom has no written constitution, relying instead on historical precedent, the Qur’an, and royal decrees as its guides. Until recently, there were no legislative bodies and no political parties. It was in a very real sense an absolute monarchy. But even absolute monarchies have their limits. Although the Saudi state has no constitution and no laws that restrict the king’s powers, the Qur’an and historical custom limit what the king does, and over time a quasi-constitutional system has developed. The ruler is chosen by members of the royal family from among its thousands of members, subject to the approval of a group of Muslim leaders (the ulema). The ulema can remove the ruler, and he is also dependent on support from tribal leaders and, more recently, from important businessmen. Notice that there is no question of female rule in Saudi Arabia, because Islam’s view of women precludes them from taking any such role.

王储穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼。 © dpa picture alliance/Alamy Stock Photo

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. © dpa picture alliance/Alamy Stock Photo

管理政府对任何人来说都太过繁重,1953 年沙特国王成立了部长会议来协助他,总理在其中发挥了重要作用独立于国王。首相任命该委员会以及其他协助他处理立法和行政事务的咨询委员会。沙特国王去世后,其后代之一费萨尔国王继位。费萨尔国王与部长会议合作,从数千名后代中选出一位继承人担任王储,并选出一位第二顺位继承人。这两位被选中的继承人在政府中被赋予重要职位,负责培训并考察他们的工作表现。

Running a government is too much for any one person, and in 1953 King Saud created a Council of Ministers to assist him, with a prime minister playing a significant role partially independent of the king. The prime minister appoints the council, along with other advisory councils which assist him in both legislative and executive matters. When King Saud died, he was replaced by one of his descendants, King Faisal, who, working with a council of ministers, chose a successor from the thousands of descendants to be crown prince, along with someone who became second in line to the throne. These two chosen successors were given important roles in government to provide training and to see how well they did.

此前,沙特家族的领导人一直是年长的高级成员。但2015年,相对年轻的萨勒曼·本·阿卜杜勒·阿齐兹·阿卜杜勒·沙特登基,任命了一位59岁的王储和一位30岁的副王储,后者出任沙特国防大臣。2017年11月,这位年轻的副王储穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼成为王储兼第一副首相。此后不久,他领导了一场清洗运动,清洗了40多名王室成员和沙特阿拉伯精英,并以各种腐败指控逮捕了他们。一些人认为这是本·萨勒曼权力的巩固,而另一些人则对追究精英罪行的努力表示赞赏。沙特阿拉伯政府高层如此大规模的改组是前所未有的,未来几年是否会找到新的稳定点,或者是否会发生更多变化,还有待观察。 2018年,异见记者贾迈勒·卡舒吉在沙特驻土耳其大使馆被谋杀。有力证据表明,王储是下令谋杀的凶手,但美国和其他国家继续与王储打交道,并未要求对谋杀案进行全面调查。王储

Until recently the chosen leaders had always been older senior members of the Saud family. But in 2015, a relatively young Salman bin Abd al-Aziz A1 Saud became king and he appointed a fifty-nine-year-old crown prince and a thirty-year-old deputy crown prince, who upon his appointment became the Saudi defense minister. In November 2017, this young deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, became crown prince and first deputy prime minister. Soon thereafter he led a purge of more than forty members of the royal family and Saudi Arabian elite, arresting them on various corruption charges. Some people saw this as a consolidation of bin Salman’s power, while others applauded the effort to hold elites accountable for their crimes. Such a drastic restructuring of the upper echelons of the Saudi Arabian government was unprecedented, and it remains to be seen whether a new stability has been found or whether more changes will take place in the coming years. In 2018, dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi embassy in Turkey. Strong evidence pointed to the crown prince as the person who ordered it, but the United States and other countries continued to deal with him and not demand that the murder be fully investigated. The crown

王子巩固了自己的权力,进一步巩固了自己作为沙特阿拉伯国际公认领导人的地位。

prince consolidated his power and further entrenched himself as the internationally recognized leader of Saudi Arabia.

2020年,沙特法院因卡舒吉谋杀案判处数名低级官员入狱,但最终却保护了王储等被强烈怀疑参与谋杀的权势更高的官员。这再次体现了“现实政治”的敏感性,这句话据说出自富兰克林·罗斯福、哈里·杜鲁门和理查德·尼克松等人之口:“他是个混蛋,但他是我们的混蛋。”

In 2020, a Saudi court sentenced several low-ranking officials to prison in connection to Khashoggi’s murder, but ultimately protected more powerful officials, such as the crown prince, who were strongly suspected to be involved in the killing. This is another example of the “real politik” sensibility embodied in the phrase, attributed to (among others) Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, and Richard Nixon: “He’s a bastard, but he is our bastard.”

与许多政府,尤其是20世纪建立的政府一样,沙特的政府体制仍在不断发展。沙特正在探索设立咨询委员会,该委员会将在未来政策制定中发挥更大的影响力。该委员会目前拥有起草和解释法律的权力,但大部分权力仍掌握在国王手中。

As is the case with many governments, especially those established in the twentieth century the Saudi system of government is still evolving. It is exploring the use of a Consultative Council, which would play a more influential role in policy making in the future. That council now has the right to draff and interpret laws, but most power still resides with the king.

人们容忍强势独裁,即人民几乎没有权力或根本没有权力,原因有很多,包括政府动用军事力量、历史先例、对变革可能带来的混乱的担忧,或者对现状感到满意。以沙特为例,尽管沙特王室收入巨额,但沙特人民相对满意。原因是政府获得了巨额石油收入,这使其能够为人民开展许多社会项目。例如,所有沙特人都有权享受免费医疗,国家雇员通常以“抵消不断上涨的生活成本”的名义获得相当于数千美元的奖金。这些项目的资金无需缴纳大量税收,同时却为沙特王室提供了奢华的生活方式。

People tolerate strong autocracies in which the people have little or no power for numerous reasons, including military force wielded by the government, historical precedent, fear of the chaos that a change would bring, or satisfaction with the existing state of affairs. In the Saudi case, despite the enormous income taken by the Saudi monarchy, the Saudi people are relatively satisfied. The reason is the huge amount of oil income received by the government that allows it to undertake numerous social projects for the people. For example, all Saudis are entitled to free medical care, and state employees often receive bonuses equivalent to thousands of US dollars in the name of “offsetting the increasing cost of living.” These projects are financed without significant taxation, even while providing lavish lifestyles for the Saudi royal family.

沙特阿拉伯专制政权的稳定在很大程度上取决于油价。高油价使得君主制政府得以“购买其合法性”。该国石油收入占其年度预算的75%以上,因此其经济健康状况会随着油价的波动而起伏。低油价挤压了政府预算,并导致紧缩措施引发民众骚乱。因此,沙特境外页岩油的发现导致全球油价大幅下跌,给君主制带来了困境。如果油价下跌,未来几年沙特政府体系很可能出现严重动荡。

The stability of the Saudi Arabian autocracy depends very much on the price of oil. A high price allows the monarchy-led government to “buy its legitimacy.” The country’s oil revenues constitute more than 75 percent of its annual budget, and therefore its economic health goes up and down with oil prices. Low oil prices squeeze the government budget and lead to austerity measures that create agitation. Thus, the discovery of shale oil outside the kingdom, which led to a drastic fall in the price of oil worldwide, presented difficulties for the monarchy. If oil prices fall, there could well be considerable turmoil in the Saudi system of government in coming years.

沙特政府处境艰难。在国内,极端宗教的逊尼派穆斯林主张回归更为严格的伊斯兰传统;而在国外,沙特政府则面临人权组织和亲西方沙特民众的强烈批评,他们呼吁加强民主,对罪犯的惩罚力度低于伊斯兰教法,并在法律面前平等对待女性。

The Saudi government finds itself in a difficult position. Internally, the ultra-religious Sunni Muslims advocate a return to more strict Islamic tradition, while externally it faces intense criticism from human rights groups and Western-oriented Saudis who call for increased democracy, less strict punishments for criminals than called for in sharia law and equal treatment for women under the law.

沙特政府的结构正在发生变化。2005年,沙特举行了市政选举,一些外部观察家认为这是沙特迈向民主的第一步。2011年,沙特宣布允许女性参加地方选举并拥有投票权。沙特阿拉伯的这种西化行为激怒了许多沙特人,例如策划了美国“9·11”袭击事件的富商兼恐怖分子奥萨马·本·拉登。

The structure of the Saudi government is changing. In 2005, municipal elections were held and were seen by some outside observers as a first step toward democracy in the kingdom. In 2011, the Saudis announced that women would be allowed to run for local elections and vote. Such westernization of Saudi Arabia infuriated a number of Saudis, such as rich businessman/ terrorist Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the 9/11 attacks on the United States.

沙特阿拉伯和其他伊斯兰国家难以与美国友好相处的原因之一是美国对以色列的强力支持。这种支持加剧了沙特阿拉伯乃至整个中东地区的反美情绪。如果沙特阿拉伯真的发展成为一个民主国家(正如美国表面上所宣称的),其结果很可能是,一个对美国中东政策的支持远不及现任政府的政府。

One of the things that makes it difficult for Saudi Arabia and other Islamic states to be friendly with the United States is the United States’ strong support for Israel. That support has fueled anti-American sentiment in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Middle East. If Saudi Arabia does evolve into a democracy, which the United States has stated it ostensibly wants, the result will likely be a government far less supportive of US Middle East policy than the current government.

关于政府的一些教训

Some Lessons About Governments

这份世界各国政府的调查应该能让你感受到政府的多样性和多样性——无论是民主的还是专制的。从中你可以看到,民主和专制的类型繁多,很难进行比较。

This survey of governments of the world should give you a sense of the variety and diversity of governments—both democratic and autocratic. From it you can see that there are many types of democracy and autocracy and that it is difficult to compare one with the other.

关于政府,可以提出一些一般性观点:

A number of general points about governments can be made:

  1. 政府反映了其历史(例如,尼日利亚政府反映了其英国传统,而强大的法国政府反映了其不稳定的历史)。
  2. Governments reflect their history (for example, the Nigerian government reflects its British heritage, and the strong French government reflects its unstable history).
  3. 政府正在演变。法国、尼日利亚和沙特阿拉伯的政府结构已与五六十年前大相径庭,苏联也已不复存在。这些国家五十年后的政府结构不太可能与今天相同。变革的速度取决于历史传统,因为当前的政府实践已融入社会,并对变革构成限制。
  4. Governments are evolving. France, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia do not have the same governmental structure they had fifty or sixty years ago, and the Soviet Union no longer exists. These countries are unlikely to have the same governmental structure fifty years from now as they have today. The rate of change depends on the historical tradition as current government practices become embodied in society and place limitations on change.
  5. 独裁政权比长期存在的民主国家更容易改变。原因在于,变革过程更容易。前苏联决定改变政府形式时,与美国相比,它相对容易做到。沙特阿拉伯则能够更快地做到这一点。
  6. Autocracies are more likely to change than long-standing democracies. The reason is that the process of change is easier. When the former Soviet Union decided to change governmental form, it could do so relatively easily compared with the United States. Saudi Arabia would be able to do so even more rapidly.
  7. 专制政权的变革既来自内部,也来自外部。前苏联政府的更迭就是一个例子。自由化进程往往会引发一些原本会被压制或压制的反对声音。
  8. Changes in autocracies occur from within as much as from without. The change in the former Soviet government is an example. Often the process of liberalization brings about opposition that otherwise would have been silent or suppressed.

更多的规则和见解体现在示例中,但我们留给您自己去提取。

More rules and insights are embodied in the examples, but we leave them for you to draw out.

未来政府的变革

Future Changes in Governments

这些政府以及其他国家的政府未来会怎样?一如既往,目前尚不明朗。随着“阿拉伯之春”余波持续在中东地区蔓延,以及这些国家努力适应瞬息万变的世界,我们很可能会看到中东独裁政权的结构发生重大变化。我们能看到的变化程度可能取决于经济形势。如果未来几年经济繁荣,大多数政府的现行体制可能会延续下去。然而,如果经济和社会状况持续低迷或进一步恶化,则可以预见更多的变化。如果爆发大规模核战争,谁知道政府还能剩下什么呢?显然,我们希望这种重大变化不会因为战争而发生,但当前棘手的社会和经济状况可能会粉碎这种希望。

What does the future hold for these and other governments? As usual, it is unclear. We are likely to see significant changes in the structure of Middle Eastern autocracies as the aftershocks of the Arab Spring continue to reverberate around the region, and as these countries struggle to adapt to an ever-changing world. How much change we see will likely depend on the economic situation. If the coming years hold prosperity, the present forms of most governments are likely to continue. If the economic and social conditions remain bad or worsen, however, more changes can be expected. And if there is a major nuclear war, who knows what will remain of government? Obviously, we hope such major changes will not occur because of war, but current troublesome social and economic conditions could dash those hopes.

这些社会和经济状况包括:许多国家(包括大部分工业化欧洲国家)的高失业率;世界范围内,社会、政治、经济和宗教纷争已然扰乱日常生活,而毁灭性武器系统的扩散;一些国家对大量民众进行镇压,剥夺他们的机会;一些国家普遍面临财政困境,它们欠着更繁荣的国家沉重的债务;欧洲和东南亚的难民危机威胁着政治和经济稳定;以及威胁着世界各个地区环境的污染。幸运的是,并非所有这些状况都存在于一个国家,外交手段以及最终政府的明智判断总能促成必要的妥协和调整,使维和行动得以顺利推进。

Some of these social and economic conditions are high unemployment rates in many countries, including much of industrialized Europe; the proliferation of destructive weapons systems in areas of the world where social, political, economic, and religious quarrels are already disrupting ordinary life; repression and denial of opportunity to large populations in some countries; widespread financial hardship in some countries burdened with heavy debt they owe to more prosperous nations; refugee crises in Europe and Southeast Asia that threaten political and economic stability; and environmental pollution that threatens to change whole areas of the world. Fortunately, not all of these conditions exist in any one country, and it is always possible that diplomacy and, ultimately, good sense exercised by governments will enable the compromises and adjustments necessary for peacekeeping to prevail.

学习回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 法国政府是议会民主制,有总统和总理。
  • The French government is a parliamentary democracy with both a president and a prime minister.
  • 中国政府是一个专制政府,共产党通过民主集中制政策对国家保持着相当大的控制力。
  • The Chinese government is an autocracy in which the Communist Party, through its policy of democratic centralism, retains significant control over the state.
  • 尼日利亚政府是一个共和民主国家,其政治不稳定在很大程度上反映了其殖民传统。
  • The Nigerian government is a republican democracy whose political instability in large part reflects its colonial heritage.
  • 俄罗斯政府可能最好被描述为一个威权民主政府。
  • The government of Russia is probably best described as an authoritarian democracy.
  • 沙特政府是一个主要基于伊斯兰原则的独裁政府。
  • The Saudi government is an autocracy based largely on Islamic principles.
  • 从这些例子中可以得出一些关于政府的教训,包括:政府反映了其历史,政府在发生变化,独裁政权可以迅速改变,而且独裁政权经常从内部发生变化。
  • Some lessons about governments that can be drawn from these examples include the following: governments reflect their history, governments are changing, autocracies can change quickly, and autocracies often change from within.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 巴士底日 (273)
  • Bastille Day (273)
  • 布尔什维克(282)
  • Bolsheviks (282)
  • 谴责动议(275)
  • censure motion (275)
  • 政变 (283)
  • coup d’état (283)
  • 民主集中制(277)
  • democratic centralism (277)
  • 法国大革命(273)
  • French Revolution (273)
  • 总统制(274)
  • presidential system (274)
  • 古兰经 (285)
  • Qur’an (285)
  • 资源诅咒(282)
  • resource curse (282)
  • 伊斯兰教法 (287)
  • sharia law (287)
  • 信任投票(275)
  • vote of confidence (275)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 《人权宣言》和法国宪法是什么关系?
  2. What is the relationship between the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the French constitution?
  3. 法国总理怎么会被免职?
  4. How can the French prime minister be removed from office?
  5. 中国政府史与欧洲政府史的一个重要区别是什么?
  6. What is an important way in which Chinese governmental history differs from European governmental history?
  7. 中国何时成为共产主义国家?
  8. When did China become a communist-ruled state?
  9. 民主集中制是什么意思?
  10. What is meant by democratic centralism?
  11. 什么叫“讨论自由,行动统一”?
  12. What is meant by “freedom of discussion, unity of action”?
  13. 为什么尼日利亚比许多其他国家更难维持政治稳定?
  14. Why is it harder for Nigeria to maintain political stability than it is for many other countries?
  15. 尼日利亚的官方语言是什么?为什么选择它?
  16. What is the official language of Nigeria? Why was it chosen?
  17. 一个国家发现石油会怎样增加该国治理的难度?
  18. How does the discovery of oil in a country make it harder to govern that country?
  19. 新俄罗斯联邦与前苏联共和国有何不同?
  20. How does the new Russian Federation differ from the former Soviet Republic?
  21. 普京总统在俄罗斯享有广泛支持,并在一场被认为公平的选举中当选。鉴于此,为什么许多西方观察家称俄罗斯为威权民主国家?
  22. President Putin enjoys widespread support in Russia and was elected in a vote that was seen as fair. Given this fact, why do many Western observers call Russia an authoritarian democracy?
  23. 沙特专制政府是否拥有无限权力?
  24. Does the Saudi autocratic government have unlimited power?
  25. 沙特人民为何容忍沙特专制?
  26. Why do the Saudi people tolerate the Saudi autocracy?
  27. 陈述从本章中可以得出的有关政府的四个教训。
  28. State four lessons about government that can be derived from this chapter.
  29. 您认为理想的政府体制是什么样的?
  30. What do you believe would be the ideal system of government?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 使用www.gouvernement.fr/en/composition-ofthe-government,列出法国总理领导下的十六个部长职位中的四个。
  2. Using www.gouvernement.fr/en/composition-ofthe-government, list four of the sixteen minister posts under the French Prime Minister.
  3. 请访问www.nigeriaembassyusa.org/index.php?page=test-sub。就人口而言,尼日利亚与其他非洲国家相比排名如何?就土地面积而言,尼日利亚排名如何?
  4. Go to www.nigeriaembassyusa.org/index.php?page=test-sub. In terms of population, how does Nigeria rank compared to other African countries? How does it rank in terms of physical size?
  5. 根据www.saudia-online.com/saudi_arabia.htm,沙特阿拉伯政府的立法部门由哪些部门组成?
  6. According to www.saudia-online.com/saudi_arabia.htm, what does the legislative branch of Saudi Arabia’s government consist of?
  7. 请访问www.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/观看《时代》杂志对弗拉基米尔·普京的采访。记者问,普京为何被选为2007年《时代》年度人物?普京认为,一个国家的主权是什么?
  8. Go to www.time.com/time/specials/2007/personoftheyear/ and watch Time s interview with Vladimir Putin. According to the reporter, why was Putin chosen as the 2007 Time Person of the Year? According to Putin, what is a country’s sovereign right?
  9. 根据 CIA 世界概况www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/,墨西哥的行政区划是什么?
  10. Using the CIA World Factbook, www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/, what are the administrative divisions of Mexico?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • Aarts、Paul 和 Carolien Roelants,《沙特阿拉伯:危险中的王国》伦敦:赫斯特,2015 年。
  • Aarts, Paul, and Carolien Roelants, Saudi Arabia: A Kingdom in Peril, London: Hurst, 2015.
  • 贝尔顿,凯瑟琳。《普京的人:克格勃如何夺回俄罗斯并攻克西方》美国首版)。纽约:法拉·斯特劳斯和吉鲁出版社,2020年。
  • Belton, Catherine. Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and Hten Took on the West, First American edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020.
  • 芬比,乔纳森,《企鹅中国近代史》伦敦:艾伦巷,2009 年。
  • Fenby, Jonathan, Penguin History of Modern China, London: Allen Lane, 2009.
  • 加夫尼,约翰,《法国的政治领导力:从戴高乐到尼古拉·萨科齐》纽约:麦克米伦,2012 年。
  • Gaffney, John, Political Leadership in France: From Charles de Gaulle to Nicolas Sarkozy, New York: Macmillan, 2012.
  • Gassen,Mash,《未来就是历史:极权主义如何夺回俄罗斯》纽约:Riverhead Books,2016 年。
  • Gassen, Mash, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, New York: Riverhead Books, 2016.
  • 哈伯德,本。MBS :穆罕默德·本·萨勒曼的崛起纽约:皇冠出版社,2020 年。
  • Hubbard, Ben. MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed Bin Salman, New York: Crown, 2020.
  • 莱西,罗伯特,《王国内部:国王、神职人员、现代主义者、恐怖分子和沙特阿拉伯的斗争》,纽约:维京出版社,2009 年。
  • Lacey, Robert, Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia, New York: Viking, 2009.
  • 麦克福尔 (McFaul)、迈克尔 (Michael)、尼古拉·彼得罗夫 (Nikolai Petrov) 和安德烈·里亚波夫 (Andrei Ryabov),《独裁与民主之间:俄罗斯后共产主义政治改革》华盛顿特区:卡内基国际和平基金会,2004 年。
  • McFaul, Michael, Nikolai Petrov, and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004.
  • 迈尔斯,史蒂文·李,《新沙皇:弗拉基米尔·普京的崛起和统治》伦敦:克诺夫出版社,2015 年。
  • Myers, Steven Lee, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin, London: Knopf, 2015.
  • Nwogu, Nneoma,《塑造 真相重塑正义:宗派政治和尼日利亚真相委员会》马里兰州兰纳姆:列克星敦图书,2007 年。
  • Nwogu, Nneoma, Shaping Truth, Reshaping Justice: Sectarian Politics and the Nigerian Truth Commission, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2007.
  • Shambaugh, David,《中国的未来》,剑桥:Polity Press,2016 年。
  • Shambaugh, David, Chinas Future, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第十六 美国民主政府

chapter 16 Democratic Government in the United States

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-16

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-16

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 简述美国政府的发展
  • Give a brief account of the development of the US government
  • 列出《独立宣言》的五个关键要素
  • List the five key elements in the Declaration of Independence
  • 概述美国联邦政府的结构
  • Outline the structure of the US federal government
  • 解释美国宪法规定的权力分配
  • Explain the distribution of powers as set out in the US Constitution
  • 描述美国的政治进程
  • Describe the political process in the United States
  • 总结第四权力、政治精英、军工联合体和 PAC 在政治进程中的作用
  • Summarize the role of the fourth estate, the political elite, the military-industrial complex, and PACs in the political process

在上一章中,我们简要探讨了五个国家的政府。在本章中,我们将专门探讨美国政府及其运作方式。正如你将看到的,政府就像你生活的其他方面一样,处于一个持续演变的过程中。我们对美国政府的总体看法是,它是一个运作良好的民主国家,各个群体之间存在分歧,但这些分歧都存在于一个各方都能接受的框架内。选举会有竞争,但选举结束后,权力交接将会相当融洽。随着唐纳德·特朗普在2016年当选总统,这种融洽的权力交接感逐渐消退。特朗普与近几任总统不同。他与建制派对抗,而不是作为建制派的一员参选,而且他没有任何政治经验。

In the previous chapter, we briefly considered the governments of five countries. In this chapter, we look specifically at the US government and how it works. As you will see, government, like other aspects of your life, is in an ongoing process of evolution. Our general conception of US government is that it is a well-functioning democracy in which various groups differ, but do so within a framework that all sides accept. Elections will be contested, but, after an election, there will be a reasonably congenial transfer of power. With the election of Donald Trump as president in 2016, that sense of congenial transfer of power faded. Trump was different than other recent presidents. He ran against the establishment, not as part of it, and had no experience in politics.

许多选民喜欢这种做法。他们觉得两个既有政党都让他们失望了,而且与他们的担忧毫不相关。这些选民喜欢特朗普对建制派的甩锅——他承诺要抽干沼泽,而且他给人的感觉不是书本上的智慧,甚至不是政治上的智慧,而是商业上的智慧——他知道如何达成协议,并且实话实说(或者至少是他自己对协议的解读)。民主党很大一部分人从未将特朗普视为合法当选,并竭尽所能地将他赶下台。他们两次弹劾他(指控他犯下将导致他下台的罪行),但并未定罪。

Many voters liked that. They felt that both established parties had let them down, and did not relate to their concerns. These voters liked that Trump dumped on the establishment—that he promised to drain the swamp, and that he didn’t convey a sense of book smarts or even political smarts, but rather business smarts—he knew how to make a deal, and to tell it like it was (or at least his interpretation of the way it was). A large portion of the Democratic Party never saw Trump as legitimately elected, and did what they could to remove him from office. They impeached (charged him with crimes that would bring about his removal from office) him twice, but did not convict him.

随着特朗普在2020年大选中以微弱优势败给约瑟夫·拜登,轮到特朗普声称选举不合法了。特朗普声称选举被他窃取了。尽管几乎所有共和党和民主党的观察员以及他任命的法官都反对他的观点,认为选举合法公正,但他仍然坚持这一信念,并最终煽动支持者攻击国会,威胁国会议员的生命,甚至威胁他的副总统——副总统承认特朗普败选,并主持了正式的权力交接。

With Trump’s narrow loss to Joseph Biden in the 2020 election, it was Trump’s turn to argue that the election was illegitimate. Trump argued that the election had been stolen from him, and despite the fact that almost all observers, both Republicans and Democrats, and judges, whom he appointed, disagreed with him, and found the elections legitimate and fair, he continued in that belief, and ultimately played a role in inciting supporters to a degree that they attacked Congress, and threatened the lives of congressmen, and even of his vice president, who accepted that Trump had lost, and who was presiding over the formal transfer of power.

特朗普的当选以及权力移交给拜登,体现了美国民主的优势和劣势。特朗普的当选并没有摧毁民主。与其说是一场政变,不如说是这是一次和平的权力交接;没有人相信袭击国会的暴徒真的会改变选举结果,或让特朗普继续掌权。与其说这是一场真正的政变,不如说是为了让特朗普继续执政而发动的。

The election of Trump, and the passing of power to Biden captures strengths and weaknesses of US democracy. Trump's election didn’t destroy democracy. Rather than a coup, there was a peaceful transfer of power; no one believed that the mob that attacked Congress was actually going to change the results of the election, or keep Trump in power. It was more like a tantrum than an actual attempt at a coup to keep Trump in office.

但特朗普的当选给所有人敲响了警钟。如果选举结果更加接近,双方都能合理地宣称自己获胜,并由法院来裁定结果,那么特朗普的反对者会怎么做,以及特朗普的支持者会怎么做,都不得而知。警钟在于,美国已经出现了两极分化,这可能会破坏我们的民主。民主的运作依赖于妥协和制衡,不仅对政府权力,也对精英权力。特朗普的当选是对政治精英权力制衡的一部分,它表明他们忽视了更广泛公众的观点,而这些观点融合了对个人主义和公平的承诺,而这些承诺是任何一方都无法捕捉到的。我们将在本章后面讨论这些问题,但在此之前,回顾一下我们政府的历史发展是有益的。

But Trump’s election was a wakeup call for all. Had the election been closer, so that both sides could have reasonably claimed to have won, and the courts had been left to decide the outcome, it is unclear what those opposing Trump would have done, and what Trump’s supporters would have done. The wakeup call is that polar divisions have developed in the United States that could undermine our democracy. Democracy works by compromise and checks and balances on the power of not only government but also of the elite. Trump’s election was part of the check on the political elite’s power, and it suggested that they had lost sight of the broader public’s views, which blended a commitment to individualism and fairness in ways that neither party captured. We will discuss these issues later in the chapter, but before we do it is useful to review the historical development of our government.

美国政府的历史发展

Historical Development of US Government

美国最初是英国的殖民地,因此我们的政府自然而然地反映了英国的传统。最初,美国与英国的联系十分紧密,但当英国试图加强对殖民地贸易的控制,并在未经殖民地立法机构同意的情况下向殖民者征税时,殖民地不得不采取行动,结束英国的统治,建立自己的国家。

Because the United States started as a colonial possession of Great Britain, it is natural that our government reflects a British heritage. Initially, ties to Britain were strong, but when Britain tried to tighten control over colonial trade and to levy taxes on the colonists without obtaining the consent of the colonial legislatures, the colonies took action to end British rule and set up their own state.

美国政府组建过程中最重要的事件发生在1776年,当时召开了第二届大陆会议,发表了《独立宣言》,并决定为美利坚合众国制定计划。《独立宣言》指出:

The most important event in the formation of the US government took place when the Second Continental Congress met in 1776, issued the Declaration of Independence, and resolved to draw up a plan for the United States of America. The Declaration of Independence states that:

  • 人民有权利反抗压迫性的政府。
  • The people have the right to revolt against oppressive government.
  • 合法的政府必须建立在被统治者的同意之上。
  • Legitimate government must be based on the consent of the governed.
  • 统治者和被统治者都有义务维护一个追求合法目的的政府。
  • Both the ruler and the ruled are obligated to preserve a government that pursues legitimate purposes.
  • 人人生而平等。
  • All men are created equal.
  • 每个人都被赋予若干不可剥夺的权利,包括生命权、自由权和追求幸福的权利。
  • All men are endowed with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

这些原则成为美国政府体制的基础。

These principles became the foundation of the US form of government.

《独立宣言》正式宣告了这场始于1775年4月邦克山战役的战争。它宣布各殖民地为“自由独立的州”。宣布独立后,各州面临着建立切实可行的政府体制的问题。这一问题最终在1787年5月于费城举行的制宪会议上得以解决。

The Declaration of Independence formalized the war that had begun with the Battle of Bunker Hill in April 1775. It proclaimed the colonies “free and independent states.” Having declared themselves independent, the states faced the problem of establishing a workable form of government. This was done in a Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in May 1787.

制宪会议之所以成功,是因为与会代表们愿意妥协。决定建立联邦政府或许是最大的妥协。它既满足了单一制政府(所有权力都集中在国家政府,中央政府在国家内部拥有绝对至高无上的地位)的支持者,也满足了联邦制(由多个独立州组成,每个州都保留对自身内部事务的控制权)的支持者。联邦政府体制兼具两者的特质。各州保留对某些事务的控制权,而中央政府保留对其他事务的控制权。

The Constitutional Convention succeeded because the delegates were willing to compromise. The decision to have a federal government was probably the biggest compromise. It satisfied both supporters of a unitary government—a government in which all the power is centralized in the national government, and the central government is absolutely supreme over all other government within such a nation—and supporters of a federation, a number of separate states, each of which retains control of its own internal affairs. The federal system of government had aspects of both. States retained control of some issues; the central government retained control over others.

其他重要的妥协包括:

Other important compromises included:

  • 众议院(按人口计算)和参议院(每个州两名)的代表人数存在差异。
  • The differential representation in the House (by population) and Senate (two per state).
  • 设立选举人团,选举总统。选举人团是由各州选民选出的选举人团体,负责选举总统和副总统。在选举人团制度中,每个州的选举人人数与该州国会众议员和参议员的人数相同,并且各州可以自行决定选举人的方式。
  • The establishment of an Electoral College to choose the president. The Electoral College is a body of electors chosen by the voters in each state to elect the president and the vice president. In the Electoral College, each state is allowed to have as many electors as it has representatives and senators in Congress, and each state can determine the method of choosing its electors.
  • 每个州都允许全体人民直接选举该州的众议院议员,并由州立法机构选出两名参议员。1
  • The direct election by all the people of a particular state of its House members and the selection by state legislatures of the two senators allowed each state.1

除了以上提到的这些,由于利益和意见的广泛冲突,很多其他问题也需要妥协。从本质上说,这部宪法就是一堆妥协的集合。

In addition to those just mentioned, compromises on many other issues were necessary because of the extensive conflict of interests and opinions. In essence, the Constitution can be characterized as a bundle of compromises.

美国宪法是美国政府和法律体系的基础,于 1787 年 9 月 17 日签署,并提交国会,建议提交州议会批准,并在九个州接受后生效,这是经过艰苦努力后才实现的。

The US Constitution—the foundation of the US government and legal system—was signed on September 17, 1787, and forwarded to Congress with the recommendation that it be submitted to state conventions for ratification and that it become effective on acceptance by nine states, which it was after much struggle.

许多州批准宪法的条件是,新政府成立后必须立即采纳保护私人权利的修正案。1791年通过的前十条修正案,就国家政府而言,实现了这一目标。这项权利法案——一份关于国家人民基本权利的正式声明——禁止国家政府侵犯基本私人权利。

Many of the states ratified the Constitution on the condition that amendments protecting private rights be adopted as soon as the new government was formed. The first ten amendments, adopted in 1791, accomplished this insofar as the national government was concerned. This Bill of Rights—a formal statement of the fundamental rights of the people of a nation— forbade the national government to invade basic private rights.

美国政府结构

The Structure of US Government

由于宪法中的妥协,美国设立了联邦政府。它运作于三个层级:国家、州和地方。随着时间的推移,这些不同层级的相对优势发生了变化。具体而言,国家政府的力量得到了加强,部分原因是战争,部分原因是通讯和交通运输的进步,部分原因是社会问题日益复杂且波及全国。然而,州和地方政府对个人和整个社会仍然至关重要。

Because of the compromises in the Constitution, the United States has a federal government. It operates on three levels: national, state, and local. Over time, the relative strengths of these various levels have changed. Specifically, the national government has been strengthened in part by wars, in part by advances in communication and transportation, and in part by the increasing complexity and nationwide scope of social problems. Nevertheless, state and local governments are still of great importance both to the individual and to our entire society.

美国五十个州各有独立的宪法、最高法院和政府机构,对大多数个人关系(例如夫妻关系、父母子女关系、雇主与雇员关系)以及财产和商业事务(包括合同、契约、遗嘱、公司和合伙关系)行使管辖权。各州负责管理其境内的商业活动;建立并管理地方政府;保障健康、安全和公共秩序;举行选举;并提供教育。

Each of the fifty states, with its independent constitution, its own supreme court, and its own governmental agencies, exercises jurisdiction over most personal relationships, such as those of husband and wife, parent and child, and employer and employee, and also over property and business matters, including contracts, deeds, wills, corporations, and partnerships. Each state regulates commerce within its borders; establishes and controls local government; protects health, safety, and public order; conducts elections; and provides education.

地方政府是州的下属机构,由州政府建制,拥有不同程度的自治权。它们包括县、市、镇、乡镇、村、自治市镇和学区,也包括公园区、卫生区以及规划和分区委员会等专门机构。地方政府与个人息息相关,个人几乎无法忽视它们提供的服务。人行道、路灯、学校、公共卫生服务、警察和消防、公园、海滩和图书馆等服务大多由地方政府提供。

Local governments are subdivisions of the state, are incorporated by the state, and possess varying degrees of autonomy They include the county, city, town, township, village, borough, and school district and also include special agencies such as park districts, sanitary districts, and planning and zoning boards. Local governments are close to the individual, who can hardly escape noticing the services they provide. The sidewalks, lights, schools, public health service, police and fire protection, parks, beaches, and libraries are largely provided by local governments.

国民政府结构

Structure of the National Government

由于国家政府的重要性日益凸显,我们对其进行了较为详细的描述。美国宪法确立的国家政府分为三个分支:行政部门、立法部门和司法部门。图16.1值得仔细研究;它概述了我们国家政府的结构。

Because the national government has become most important, we describe it in some detail. The national government of the United States as established by the Constitution is divided into three branches: the executive branch, the legislative branch, and the judicial branch. Figure 16.1 is worth careful study; it provides an outline of the structure of our national government.

行政部门是负责执行法律和管理公共事务的政府部门,由总统领导,总统负责执行法律。所有行政部门成员都直接对总统负责,总统之下还有副总统(在总统无法履行职责时代行总统职务)和内阁(政府主要行政部门的首脑)。这些内阁成员称为部长,由总统任命,但须经参议院批准。行政部门内还有许多机构和委员会,例如环境保护局。这些机构对总统负责的程度由法律决定。政府的行政部门主要负责执行法律和开展现代政府必须参与的众多日常活动。然而,总统在制定政府政策方面也发挥着重要作用。

The executive branch, the branch of government charged with the execution of laws and the administration of public affairs, is headed by the president, who is in charge of enforcing or executing the laws. Under the president, to whom all members of the executive branch are directly responsible, are the vice president, who would become president if the president were unable to serve, and the Cabinet, the heads of the major administrative departments of government. These Cabinet members, called secretaries, are appointed by the president, subject to approval by the Senate. Within the executive department there are also a number of agencies and commissions such as the Environmental Protection Agency. The extent to which these are responsible to the president is determined by law. The executive branch of the government is primarily concerned with enforcing the laws and with carrying on daily the many activities in which a modern government must engage. However, the president also plays an important role in determining governmental policies.

立法机构是政府中拥有制定和立法权力的部门。它由国会两院组成:众议院和参议院。立法机构主要是政府的政策制定机构。它决定

The legislative branch is the branch of the government vested with the power to enact and legislate the law. It consists of the two houses of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. The legislative branch is chiefly the policy making agency of government. It determines

图 16.1截至2022年的美国政府结构图。美国政府分为三个部门:立法、行政和司法。(来源:美国人口普查局,《美国统计摘要》)

Figure 16.1Diagram of the government of the United States as of 2022. The US government is organized into three branches: the legislative, executive, and judicial. (Source: US Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States)

图 16.2法案如何成为法律。此图展示了拟议立法颁布成为法律的最典型方式。既有更复杂的途径,也有更简单的途径。大多数法案被搁置,从未成为法律。

Figure 16.2How a bill becomes law. This diagram illustrates the most typical way in which proposed legislation is enacted into law. There are more complicated, as well as simpler, routes. Most bills fall by the wayside and never become law.

通过颁布法律或法规来执行政府政策。(为了更好地理解法案如何成为法律,请参见图16.2和第295页的附框。)

government policies by passing laws, or statutes. (See Figure 16.2 and the box on page 295 for a better understanding of how a bill becomes a law.)

司法部门是政府的一个部门,负责根据具体案件对法律进行解释。司法部门由最高法院和各下级联邦法院及特别联邦法院组成。一旦某项法律的含义在应用于某一案件时得到确定,即构成了一个先例,类似案件也可能以同样的方式判决。联邦法院不仅解释国会通过的法律,还解释宪法本身。就法律而言,美国宪法的含义由最高法院决定。如果最高法院明显且持续地曲解宪法,主要的补救措施是众议院弹劾相关法官。然后,参议院将对他们进行审判,如果他们被判有罪,则将他们免职。

The judicial branch is the branch of government that interprets the laws as they apply to particular cases that may arise. It consists of the Supreme Court and of the various lower and special federal courts. Once the meaning of a law has been decided in its application to a case, a precedent is said to have been established, and similar cases are likely to be decided in the same way. The federal courts interpret not only the laws passed by Congress but also the Constitution itself. For legal purposes, the Constitution of the United States means whatever the Supreme Court says it means. If the Court should obviously and persistently misinterpret the Constitution, the primary redress would be for the House of Representatives to impeach the justices responsible. Then the Senate would try them and, if they were convicted, remove them from office.

我们现在转向更广泛的问题,澄清我们的国家政府。

We now turn to the broad issues, clarifying our national government.

我们国家政府的性质

The Nature of Our National Government

“我们的国家政府是什么样的?”这个问题的简短答案只需四个词:民主、共和、联邦和总统。我们的国家政府是民主的,而非独裁或寡头政治;是共和制,而非君主制;是联邦制,这与世界上大多数单一制政府不同;是总统制,而非议会制。值得注意的是,所有五十个州的政府都具有与国家政府相同的基本特征,只是它们是单一制而非联邦制。

A short answer to the question “What kind of national government do we have?” would contain as few as four words: democratic, republican, federal, and presidential. Our national government is democratic rather than dictatorial or oligarchical; it is republican rather than monarchical; it is federal, in contrast to most of the governments of the world, which are unitary; and it is presidential rather than parliamentary. It should be noted that the governments of all the fifty states have the same basic characteristics as the national government except that they are unitary rather than federal.

为什么我们的政府既是民主政府又是共和政府关于美国是民主政府还是共和政府,有一个由来已久但毫无结果的争论。实际上,美国兼具这两种政体的基本特征,因此可以将其描述为既是民主政府又是共和政府。共和政体是一种政府形式,在这种政体中,国家元首——总统——不是世袭的,而是由有投票资格的公民选举产生的。根据这个定义,美国是一个共和政体。我们的最高法院这样表述美国的共和政体概念:“共和政体政府的显著特征是人民有权选择自己的官员。”这使得共和政体与民主政体同义,民主政体就是我们现在的政府类型。从技术上讲,美国实行的是代议制民主政体,即人民不是直接做出大多数政府决策,而是通过民选代表做出决策;它不同于纯粹的民主政体,即所有公民直接就每一项立法进行投票的政治制度。纯粹的民主只有在非常小的社区中才有可能实现。

Why Our Government Is Both a Democracy and a Republic There is an old but fruitless argument as to whether the United States is a democracy or a republic. Actually, the nation has the essential characteristics of both of these forms, and therefore it may be described as both democratic and republican. A republic is a form of government in which the head of state, the president, does not inherit the office but is elected by those citizens who are qualified to vote. The United States is a republic according to this definition. Our Supreme Court has expressed the American concept of a republic as follows: “The distinguishing feature of the republican form of government is the right of the people to choose its own officers.” This makes republic synonymous with democracy, which is the kind of government we have. Technically the United States has a representative democracy, a form of government in which the people make most governmental decisions not directly but through elected representatives, rather than a pure democracy, a political system under which all citizens vote directly on every piece of legislation. Pure democracy is possible only in very small communities.

总统制政府的含义我们已经注意到,美国的国家政府是总统制。在总统制政府中,行政长官(通常称为总统)由选举产生,任期固定,独立于立法机构或立法机构,并拥有直接源自宪法的某些权力。相比之下,在议会制政府中,行政部门是一个委员会或内阁,代表立法机构中的多数党,并且只有在其能够获得立法机构多数席位的情况下才能任职。

The Meaning of Presidential Government We have noted that the US national government is presidential. In a presidential form of government, the chief executive (usually called the president) is elected for a definite period of years independent of the legislative or lawmaking body and has certain powers derived directly from the Constitution. In contrast, under the parliamentary form of government, the executive branch is a committee, or cabinet, that represents the majority party in the legislative body and holds office only as long as it can command a majority in that body.

英国是议会制政府的典范。内阁及其首相对议会负责,只有在议会支持其政策的情况下才能任职。议会可以通过批准或发起对政府的不信任投票来撤回对首相的支持。这种制度有利于行政部门和立法部门的密切协调。而在以美国为代表的总统制下,总统和国会多数党可能代表不同的政党,因此无法合作。近年来,这种情况屡见不鲜。

Great Britain presents a good example of parliamentary government. There the cabinet and its chief, the prime minister, are responsible to Parliament, and they can hold office only as long as Parliament supports their policies. The Parliament may withdraw its support for the prime minister by approving or introducing a vote of no confidence against the government. This system makes for close coordination of the executive and legislative departments. Under the presidential system, as exemplified in the United States, it is possible for the president and the majority in Congress to represent different parties and therefore fail to cooperate. This has happened frequently in recent years.

总统的职能主要有两大:一是领导制定政策并向国会提交立法提案;二是行政管理,确保庞大而笨重的政府机构平稳高效地运转,履行其各项正常职责。后者涉及许多重要职责,包括担任国家武装部队总司令。因此,当美国对伊拉克开战时,最终做出决定的是当时的总统乔治·W·布什。

The president has two major functions: to take the lead in formulating policies and proposing legislation to Congress, and the administrative task of keeping the vast and unwieldy government organization operating smoothly and efficiently to perform its various normal duties. The latter involves many important responsibilities, including acting as commander in chief of the nations armed forces. Thus, when the United States went to war against Iraq, it was the then President George W. Bush who ultimately was responsible for making the decision to do so.

拜登总统。 ©维基百科

President Biden. © Wikipedia

宪法权力的分配纵观美国宪法的最初制定和现存情况,可以发现政治权力的广泛分配。开国元勋们虽然渴望建立一个足够强大的中央政府来治理国家,但又担心权力过于集中,因此试图制定防止权力滥用的措施。广义上讲,权力的分配遵循四项宪法原则:

Distribution of Powers by the Constitution A broad view of the national Constitution as originally devised and as it stands today reveals a wide distribution of political power. The Founding Fathers, though desiring a central government strong enough to govern, feared too great a concentration of power and therefore attempted to devise a means for preventing the abuse of power. Broadly speaking, power is distributed in accordance with four constitutional principles:

  1. 联邦制——权力由国家政府和各州划分。
  2. Federalism—power is divided between the national government and the separate states.
  3. 权力分立——立法权、司法权和行政权分别由国家政府的三个独立部门行使,每个部门都有各自的职责和权力限制。
  4. Separation of powers—legislative, judicial, and executive powers are divided among three separate branches of the national government, each with its own duties and limitations of power.
  5. 制衡——一个政府部门的决策必须得到其他政府部门的批准。这一制度的设计旨在防止任何政府部门权力过大。
  6. Checks and balances—the decisions of one branch must be ratified by different branches of government. This system is designed so that no one branch of government can become too powerful.
  7. 有限政府——权力在人民和政府之间分配。这第四个原则包括人民主权、个人权利不可侵犯以及宪政等民主原则。
  8. Limited government—power is divided between the people and the government. This fourth principle includes the democratic doctrines of popular sovereignty, the inviolability of personal rights, and constitutionalism.

国家与各州之间的权力划分联邦制下的一大难题是如何在中央政府和各州之间划分权力。在美国,理论上,国家政府只拥有授予它的权力,其他所有权力都属于各州。授予联邦政府的权力有两种:列举权力和默示权力。列举权力由宪法明确授予,包括赋予国会立法权(第一条第一款和第八款)、赋予总统行政权(第二条)以及赋予最高法院和其他联邦法院司法权(第三条)。一般而言,授予国家政府的列举权力处理所有国际事务和国家(而非仅仅州)的国内事务。默示权力只能从宪法中推断出来,没有明确的规定。然而,这些默示权力为国家政府提供了必要的灵活性,以应对多年来经济和社会变革带来的新问题。正如一些批评联邦权力扩张的人士所说,这些权力也使中央政府能够侵犯各州的权利和职能。这些默示权力基于所谓的弹性条款(第一条第八款),该条款赋予国会“制定一切必要且适当的法律,以执行上述权力,以及本宪法赋予美国政府或其任何部门或官员的所有其他权力”。

Division of Powers Between the Nation and the States One of the great problems under federalism is how to divide powers between the central government and the states. In the United States, the national government theoretically possesses only the powers delegated to it, and all others belong to the states. Powers delegated to our federal government are of two kinds, enumerated and implied. The enumerated powers are expressly delegated by the Constitution and include the grant of legislative powers to Congress (Article I, Sections 1 and 8), executive powers to the president (Article II), and judicial powers to the Supreme Court and other federal courts (Article III). In general, the enumerated powers delegated to the national government deal with all international affairs and domestic affairs of a national, rather than merely state, concern. The implied powers can only be inferred from the Constitution and have no explicit provision. They have, however, provided the flexibility necessary for the national government to meet the new problems arising over the years from economic and social change. They have also, as some critics of expanding federal powers put it, enabled the central government to encroach on the rights and functions of the states. The implied powers are based on the so-called elastic clause (Article I, Section 8), which gives Congress the power “to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.”

宪法中关于权力划分的规定也区分了专属权力和共同权力,尽管区分得不是很清楚。专属权力仅属于国家政府或各州政府。共同权力则同时属于国家和州政府,例如征税、借贷和支出的权力。许多政府权力在最初的宪法中并未提及,当时普遍的理解是,这些权力属于各州。《第十修正案》明确规定,这些保留或剩余权力“分别保留给各州,或保留给人民” 。2

The constitutional provisions for the division of powers also distinguish, though not very clearly, between exclusive and concurrent powers. Exclusive powers belong only to the national government or only to the states. Concurrent powers belong to both the national and state governments, such as the power to tax, borrow, and spend. Many government powers were not mentioned in the original Constitution, and the general understanding was that these belonged to the separate states. The Tenth Amendment made it plain that these reserved or residual powers “are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”2

然而,归根结底,显而易见的是,尽管美国谨慎地尝试分权,但国家至上已成为美国宪法体系的一项原则。这一原则源于“国家最高法律条款”,该条款规定,即使州宪法和法律中存在任何相反规定,宪法、国会依据宪法制定的法律以及条约均为国家最高法律。如发生冲突,各州必须进行必要的修改,以符合国家法律。此外,当存在冲突时,国家政府的一个分支机构——最高法院——将对相关问题进行裁决,因此,实际上,国家政府在自行审理案件。

In the final analysis, however, it is clear that in spite of a careful attempt to separate powers, national supremacy has become a principle of the US constitutional system. This principle grows out of the supreme-law-of-the-land clause, which states that the Constitution, laws of Congress in pursuance thereof, and treaties are the supreme law of the land, despite anything to the contrary in state constitutions and laws. In case of conflict, the states must make the necessary changes to conform to national law. Moreover, a branch of the national government, the Supreme Court, decides the issue when a conflict exists, so that in effect the national government judges its own case.

政府各部门权力分立

Separation of Powers of the Branches of Government

为了进一步防范暴政,开国元勋们根据权力分立的原则,按职能划分政府权力。詹姆斯·麦迪逊写道:

As an additional safeguard against tyranny, the Founding Fathers divided governmental powers on a functional basis in accordance with the principle of separation of powers. James Madison wrote:

殖民地皇家总督权力过分集中,以及独立战争时期立法机构在州政府中的崇高地位,都未能令人满意。开国元勋们既担心多数选民的暴政,也担心强势行政机构的暴政。大多数开国元勋都是保守派,他们希望保护财产免受多数民众“恶意”的侵害。他们决定将立法、行政和司法权力置于三个不同的权力机构中,每个权力机构都相互独立。这三个政府部门不仅相互独立,而且还直接依赖于不同的公职来源。总统由选举团选举产生,任期四年;参议员由州立法机构选举产生,任期六年;众议员由人民直接选举产生,任期两年;法官由总统和参议院选举产生,任期终身。因此,即使这些宪法机制可能不会永远挫败多数人的意愿,但即使是大多数公民也很难“夺取”对政府的完全控制权并“压迫”少数人。

The overconcentration of power in the colonial royal governors and the exalted position of the legislatures in the state governments of the Revolutionary War era had both proved unsatisfactory. The Founding Fathers feared tyranny by a majority of the electorate as well as by a strong executive. Most of the fathers were conservatives who wanted, among other things, to safeguard property against the “ill-humor” of popular majorities. They decided to place legislative, executive, and judicial powers in three different branches, each independent of the others. Each of the three branches of government was designed to be not only independent of the others but also directly dependent on different sources for office. The president was to be chosen by the electors in the Electoral College for four years; senators by state legislatures for six years; representatives directly by the people for two years; and judges by the president and Senate for life. As a consequence, it would be difficult for even the majority of citizens to “seize” complete control of the government and “tyrannize” over the minority, even though these constitutional mechanisms might not frustrate the will of the majority forever.

制衡原则是对权力分立原则的补充和修改。由于这一原则,行政、立法和司法权在实践中从未完全分立。广义上讲,权力分立是制衡制度的一部分,因为它应验了麦迪逊的名言:“必须以野心来制衡野心”。然而,严格来说,制衡是指对每个部门施加限制,要求其将部分权力与其他权力分割,使其不能独立行使分配给它的主要职能。尽管一些流行的观点与此相反,但宪法的作者从未打算让三个部门完全独立。他们想要防止的是所有立法权和所有行政权落入同一人手中。

Checks and Balances Supplementing and modifying the principle of separation of powers is the principle of checks and balances. Because of this principle, there has never been in practice a complete separation of executive, legislative, and judicial powers. Broadly speaking, the separation of powers is part of the checks-and-balances system, for it fulfills Madison’s dictum, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” Strictly speaking, however, checks and balances refer to restraints placed on each branch by requiring it to divide some of its powers with the others so that it cannot exercise independently the major functions allotted to it. Despite some popular opinion to the contrary, the authors of the Constitution never intended the three branches to be completely independent of each other. What they wanted to prevent was all legislative powers and all executive powers from falling into the same hands.

宪法明确规定了三个部门之间的相互依存,麦迪逊也认为这对于自由政府至关重要。3每个政府部门都有一定的责任和权力来影响其他两个部门的职能。国会制定法律,但总统有权否决,而总统的否决权可以被参众两院三分之二的多数票推翻。最高法院可以宣布国会法案无效,但国会决定最高法院的上诉管辖权,总统和参议院任命法官。总统可以缔结条约,但必须征得参议院的建议和同意,总统对政府公职人员的任命必须得到参议院的确认。总统和参议院三分之二的议员可以缔结条约,但如果涉及任何款项,则必须由众议院批准。总统负责执行法律,但国会必须设立部门和机构并提供支持。国会设立的许多监管委员会(属于行政机构)实际上行使行政、立法和司法权力。国会通过调查委员会和其他途径,努力确保法律得到忠实执行。实际上,三个部门都参与公共政策的制定和管理。

The Constitution clearly provides for interdependence between the three branches, which Madison also said was essential to free government.3 Each branch of the government has some responsibility and power to influence the functions of the other two. Congress enacts laws, but they are subject to the president’s veto, and that veto can be overridden by a two-thirds majority in each house. The Supreme Court can declare acts of Congress void, but Congress determines the appellate jurisdiction of the Court, and the president and the Senate appoint the judges. The president can make treaties, but only with the advice and consent of the Senate, and presidential appointments to government offices must receive Senate confirmation. The president and two-thirds of the Senate can make a treaty, but the House of Representatives must approve if any money is involved. The president administers the laws, but Congress must establish the departments and agencies and provide for their support. Many of the regulatory commissions (which are administrative agencies) created by Congress actually exercise executive, legislative, and judicial powers. Congress, by investigative committees and other means, attempts to secure the faithful administration of the laws. In a very real sense, all three branches participate in the making and the administration of public policy.

各部门权力的界限不断受到考验。例如,宪法(第一条第八款第十一款)明确赋予国会宣战权;然而,总统经常在国会未宣战的情况下派遣政府部队参战。当总统这样做时,他们会声称这实际上不是战争,而是“警察行动”。越南战争就是最鲜明的例子。

The extent of the power of the various branches is continually being tested. For example, the Constitution (in Article I, Section 8, paragraph 11) specifically gives Congress the right to declare war; yet presidents have often entered government forces into battle without having Congress declare war. When they do this, presidents say it is not really a war but a “police action.” The Vietnam conflict is the most vivid example.

制衡。

Check and balances.

为了回应越南的“警察行动”,国会通过了《战争权力法案》,旨在明确规定总统在何时必须就类似战争行动征求国会的意见,但该法案的效果并不理想,从入侵格林纳达、两伊战争中美国舰艇在伊朗附近波斯湾的行动以及1999年轰炸科索沃可以看出,这些行动都是未经国会批准的。在1991年的海湾战争中,老布什总统(小布什的父亲)保留了单方面出兵参战的权利,克林顿总统在科索沃和奥巴马总统在利比亚也都保留了同样的权利。然而,总统通常都会在开战前争取国会批准(比如小布什总统在2003年的伊拉克战争中就这么做了),尽管他们认为不需要批准。独立的司法机构和司法审查美国传统高度信赖独立的司法机构,认为司法机构应免受任何压力和政治报复的威胁。民主理论并未要求法院直接受民众控制。美国宪法规定最高法院相对独立于行政和立法部门,法官一旦被任命,只有通过国会弹劾和定罪才能被免职。法院的职能是解释法律并将其应用于个案。为了完成这项任务,独立性至关重要,以避免决策受到公众情绪或职位保障和庇护观念的影响。

In response to the Vietnam “police action,” Congress passed the War Powers Act, which was meant to define clearly when the president must consult Congress about a warlike action, but it has not worked out that way, as you can see by considering the invasion of Grenada, the actions of US ships in the Persian Gulf off Iran in the war between Iraq and Iran, and the bombing of Kosovo in 1999, all of which were done without congressional approval. In the Persian Gulf War of 1991, President George H. W. Bush (the father of George W. Bush) maintained his right to commit forces to war unilaterally, as did President Clinton in Kosovo and President Obama in Libya. However, usually presidents do try to get congressional approval before entering into war (as President George W. Bush did in the 2003 Iraq War), even though they argue that they do not need it. An Independent Judiciary and Judicial Review US tradition places great faith in an independent judiciary, one free of all pressure and all fear of political reprisal. Democratic theory has not demanded that the courts be directly subject to popular control. The US Constitution provides for a Supreme Court relatively free of the executive and legislative branches, and once the judges are appointed, they can be removed only by impeachment and conviction by Congress. The function of the courts is to interpret the law and apply it in individual cases. For this task, independence is necessary in order to avoid decisions influenced by public sentiment or thoughts of job security and patronage.

法律解释权是一项巨大的权力。正如你在本书中看到的,概念往往模糊不清,必须有人赋予它们具体的含义。“人人享有平等权利”是否要求学生乘坐校车前往特定学校?隔离的私人俱乐部是否侵犯了非会员的权利?我们是否拥有宪法赋予的医生协助自杀的权利?推翻死刑判决需要多少新提出的证据,以及哪些证据类型?做出这些以及类似的裁决是法院的主要职能。

The power to interpret the law is an enormous power. As you have seen throughout this book, concepts are often vague and somebody must give them specific meaning. Does “equal rights for all” require busing students to particular schools? Are segregated private clubs violating the rights of nonmembers? Do we have a constitutional right to doctor-assisted suicide? How much newly presented evidence, and what kind, is necessary to overturn a death sentence? Making these decisions and others like them is the main function of the courts.

随着最高法院的发展,它已成为人民权利的保护者(因为它对这些权利进行了解释)。美国通过的每一项法律都要接受国家最高法院或颁布该法律的州最高法院的司法审查。根据司法审查,最高法院对立法或行政行为的合宪性作出判决。如果法院裁定某项法律违宪,则该法律不再是法律。这种独立的司法审查是我们权力制衡体系中的第三项,是美国对政府的独特贡献,并且发挥了良好的作用。国家宪法没有明确授予或否认最高法院的司法审查权,但自1803年以来,最高法院一直在行使这项权力。当时,首席大法官约翰·马歇尔在“马伯里诉麦迪逊案”中得出结论,最高法院必须这样做才能履行其明确的职责,即对所有根据宪法产生的案件行使管辖权。

As the Supreme Court has evolved, it has become a protector of the rights of the people (as it interprets those rights). Every law passed in the United States is subject to judicial review by the Supreme Court of the nation or the supreme court of the state in which it was enacted. Under judicial review, the Supreme Court passes judgment on the constitutionality of a legislative or executive act. If the Court decides a law is unconstitutional, it is no longer a law. This independent judicial review, the third in our system of checks and balances, is a unique US contribution to government and it has served us well. The national Constitution does not expressly grant or deny the Supreme Court the power of judicial review, but the Court has exercised it since 1803, when Chief Justice John Marshall concluded in the case of Marbury v. Madison that the Court must do so to fulfill its expressed duty of exercising jurisdiction over all cases arising under the Constitution.

开国元勋们的本意是否如此尚不确定,但我们的政府体制要求这一职能由某个机构来履行,而最高法院是合乎逻辑的选择。马歇尔的观点或许带有部分政治色彩,但它合乎逻辑,并且已被证明是权宜之计。他的基本假设是,宪法高于普通法,而民主理论也认可这一假设。

Whether the Founding Fathers intended it to be so is uncertain, but our system of government required that this function be performed by some agency, and the Court was the logical choice. Marshall’s opinion may have been partially political, but it was logical and has proved expedient. His basic assumption, which democratic theory endorses, is that the Constitution is superior to ordinary law.

司法审查的必要性源于联邦制、权力分立以及私人权利的不可侵犯性。法院裁定国家政府是否侵犯了保留给各州的权力,各州是否超越了其宪法权力,总统或国会是否侵犯了对方的正当权限,以及国家或州政府是否侵犯了宪法保障的私人权利。当然,这并不能防止法院侵犯包括各州在内的其他机构的既定权限。

The necessity for judicial review arises from federalism, the separation of powers, and the inviolability of private rights. The Court decides whether the national government has encroached on the powers reserved to the states, whether the states have exceeded their constitutional powers, whether the president or Congress has encroached on the rightful sphere of the other, and whether the national or state governments have violated constitutionally guaranteed private rights. This, of course, provides no safeguards against encroachment by the Court on the allotted spheres of the other agencies, including the states.

司法审查中引发最大反对的方面是撤销国会法案。批评者认为,撤销国会法案就是挫败民选代表所表达的民意。这种指责不无道理,但大多数美国人宁愿让多数人的意愿偶尔受挫,也不愿拥有一个多数人不受宪法约束的政府体制。如果一项措施确实得到了公众的大力支持,人民总是可以诉诸宪法修正案或新的立法,并根据法院的反对意见进行调整。

The aspect of judicial review that has provoked the greatest opposition is the voiding of acts of Congress. To nullify acts of Congress is to frustrate the will of the people expressed by democratically elected representatives, or so the critics have argued. There is truth in this accusation, but most Americans prefer having the majority will occasionally frustrated to having a system of government in which the majority is free of constitutional restraints. If a measure really has powerful public support, the people can always resort to a constitutional amendment or new legislation, adjusted to meet the Court’s objections.

截至2022年中期的最高法院大法官名单。前排,从左至右:大法官塞缪尔·A·阿利托(Samuel A. Alito, Jr.)、大法官克拉伦斯·托马斯(Clarence Thomas)、首席大法官约翰·G·罗伯茨(John G. Roberts, Jr.)、大法官斯蒂芬·G·布雷耶(Stephen G. Breyer)和大法官索尼娅·索托马约尔(Sonia Sotomayor)。后排,从左至右:大法官布雷特·M·卡瓦诺(Brett M. Kavanaugh)、大法官埃琳娜·卡根(Elena Kagan)、大法官尼尔·M·戈萨奇(Neil M. Gorsuch)和大法官艾米·科尼·巴雷特(Amy Coney Barrett)。

The Supreme Court Justices as of mid 2022.Front row, left to right: Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Back row, left to right: Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett.

© 美国政府

© US Govt.

最高法院理论上不涉及政治,其裁决旨在反映对问题的中立考量。但这种中立性是不可能的,近年来,人们甚至可以根据许多法官的意识形态观点来预测他们的裁决。由于一些法官辞职和去世,特朗普总统在卸任前任命了三位倾向保守的法官。这导致一些民主党人认为,当他们掌握权力时,应该增加法官人数,这将允许民主党总统任命自由派法官。另一些人则认为,这种“法院填塞”的做法会导致共和党人一旦重新掌权也会效仿。最高法院在很大程度上致力于非政治化法院和法院的判决。在美国高度紧张的政治气氛下,这是否可能还有待观察。

The Supreme Court is theoretically unpolitical, and its decisions are meant to reflect a neutral consideration of the issues. But such neutrality is impossible, and in recent years, it has been possible to predict many justices’ decisions based on their ideological views. Because of resignations and deaths President Trump appointed three conservative leaning justices before leaving office. This led some Democrats to argue that, when they have the power, they should increase the number of justices, which would allow a Democratic president to appoint liberal judges. Others argued that such “court packing” would lead Republicans to do the same if and when they return to power. For the most part, the Supreme Court works hard to depoliticize the Court and Court decisions. Whether that is possible in the US’s highly charged political atmosphere remains to be seen.

联邦法官并非高踞象牙塔,其判决并非完全不受公众舆论左右。当最高法院推翻先前判决时,几乎必然反映出公众舆论的根本性转变。例如,1954年,最高法院就“隔离但平等”的公立学校设施是否符合宪法做出了一项期待已久的裁决。该裁决推翻了一项56年前的裁决,认定公立学校的种族隔离是对“法律平等保护”的否定。同样,2015年,最高法院将同性婚姻合法化。在这两起案件中,裁决都反映了整个国家社会风气的变化。

Federal judges do not sit in an ivory tower rendering their decisions completely apart from public opinion. When the Court reverses a previous decision, this almost invariably reflects a basic change in public opinion. For example, in 1954, the Supreme Court rendered a long awaited decision on the constitutionality of “separate-but-equal” public school facilities. It reversed a fifty-six-year-old decision and found segregation in public schools to be a denial of “equal protection of the laws.” Similarly, in 2015, the Court legalized same-sex marriage. In both those cases, the decisions reflected changing social mores in the country as a whole.

最高法院意识形态构成近期的变化,导致许多人认为,一些长期存在的法律先例,例如妇女在胎儿存活前享有堕胎权,可能会被修改,甚至被推翻。这种推翻很可能会引发关于这些判决的政治和意识形态性质的争论。这些争论并非毫无根据。现实情况是,法院判决本质上就带有政治维度,宪法也受到多种解释的制约。我们只希望,政治和意识形态驱动的对判决的解读能够尽可能减少。

Recent changes in the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court lead many to believe that some long-held legal precedents, such as women’s right to an abortion up until fetus viability, are likely to be modified, if not reversed. Such a reversal will likely lead to debates about the political and ideological nature of the decisions. Those de bates are not without foundation. The reality is that court decisions, by their very nature, have political dimensions and the Constitution is subject to multiple interpretations. One only hopes that politics- and ideological-driven interpretations of decisions are reduced as much as possible.

几乎所有观察家都认为,近期双方在解释法院判决时所体现的意识形态因素不利于民主。无论法院如何裁决,反对者都可以声称其基于意识形态。但法院的裁决也可以被解读为基于大法官对法律的解读。法院努力保持中立,并建立一个双方都能接受的框架。这才是“法治”而非“政府治国”的真正含义。法院的本意是遏制政治斗争,双方都需要竭尽全力为大法官争取利益。​​一旦丧失了对中立的信念,民主的基础就会削弱。未来十年,政治家们很可能会探索如何让最高法院和下级法院恢复其意识形态,甚至可能使其真正成为一个不那么受意识形态影响的机构。

Almost all observers believe that the recent ideological elements in the interpretation of court decisions, on both sides, are bad for democracy. Whatever way the Court decides can be claimed by the opponents as ideologically based. But they can also be interpreted as based in the Justice’s interpretation of the law. Courts work hard to be neutral and to establish a framework that both sides will accept. It is what was meant by the “rule of law” rather than the “rule of government.” Tire courts were meant to keep political fights in check and both sides need to bend over backwards to give the Justices to the benefit of the doubt. To the degree that that belief in neutrality is lost, the foundation for democracy is reduced In the next decade it is likely that statesmen will be exploring ways to return the Supreme Court, and the lower courts, to be seen, and possibly even to be, a less ideologically based institution.

有限政府:根据宪法,我国的国家政府权力有限。首先,它与各州分享权力。其次,选民可以通过相当频繁的自由选举,罢免现任官员或延长其任期。第三,每位公民都享有宪法所承认的某些不可剥夺的权利。这些权利包括言论、集会和宗教自由,还包括未经正当法律程序而不受审判、定罪和惩罚的权利——也就是说,被告有权享受法律为确保公正审判而赋予的某些程序和特权。

Limited Government Our national government under the Constitution has limited power. First, it shares power with the states. Second, at fairly frequent intervals, the voters, in free elections, may reject those in office or extend their tenure. Third, every citizen has certain inalienable rights recognized by our Constitution. These include freedom of speech, assembly, and religion, and they also include the right not to be tried, convicted, and punished for crimes without due process of law—that is, without being given the benefit of certain procedures and privileges that the law provides for an accused person in order to ensure a fair trial.

美国政府有两个特点,都与司法审查密切相关,需要在此特别评论。其一,我们的法律和宪法承认每个公民都享有某些不可剥夺的权利。其二,尽管我们的联邦宪法难以修改,但随着新情况的出现,许多条款的含义会通过法院的重新解释过程逐渐改变。因此,它有时被称为一部活宪法。

Two characteristics of US government, both of which are closely related to the subject of judicial review, require special comment at this point. One is the recognition by our laws and Constitution that every citizen has certain inalienable rights. The second is the fact that, though our federal Constitution is difficult to amend, the meanings ascribed to many of its clauses change gradually, as new situations arise, through the process of reinterpretation by the courts. For this reason it has sometimes been called a living constitution.

个人不可剥夺的权利我国宪法序言宣称,政府的伟大目的之一是“确保我们自己和子孙后代享有自由的幸福”。美国的有限宪政理念基于这样的主张:人民为自己保留某些自由领域,政府不得侵犯;人民拥有任何政治当局不得赋予或剥夺的固有权利,“其中包括生命、自由和追求幸福的权利”。民主政府假定多数人将统治,但少数人也有权表达不同意见。在美国,与任何民主国家一样,多数人的统治只有在尊重少数人权利的情况下才是合法的。

Individuals' Inalienable Rights The Preamble of our Constitution contains the declaration that one of the great purposes of government is “to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” The US concept of limited, constitutional government is based on the proposition that the people reserve to themselves certain areas of freedom that government may not invade, that people have inherent rights no political authority may either give or take away, “and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Democratic government assumes that the majority will rule but also that the minority has the right to dissent. In the United States, as in any democracy, the majority rules legitimately only so long as it respects minority rights.

开国元勋们认为政府在很大程度上是自由的敌人,而非朋友。如前所述,最初的宪法及其权利法案提供了针对国家政府的保障措施,而第十四修正案将其中大部分保障措施扩展至各州。4经验告诉我们,政府既可以是自由既是敌人,也是朋友。我们大多数人并不后悔政府被禁止侵犯广泛的私人权利,尽管我们可能不再认为政府是必要之恶。我们知道,自由与安全密不可分,如果没有稳定有效的政府提供的安全保障,我们几乎无法享有任何自由。因此,一百多年来,人们越来越依赖政府来促进基本人权。

The Founding Fathers considered government to be largely an enemy of freedom rather than a friend. As stated earlier, the original Constitution and its Bill of Rights provided safeguards against the national government, and the Fourteenth Amendment extended most of these to the states.4 We have learned through experience that government can be both the enemy and the friend of freedom. Most of us do not regret that our government was forbidden the right to invade a wide sphere of private rights, though we may no longer believe that government is a necessary evil. We know that liberty and security are inseparable and that without the security provided by stable, effective government, there would be few freedoms to enjoy. Thus, the trend for more than a hundred years has been toward popular dependence on government to promote basic human rights.

权利与义务权利从来都不是绝对的。此外,权利也包含义务。自由的权利包含尊重他人自由的义务,无论这些自由关乎他们的宗教、政党、经济理念或居住地的选择。我们的自由只有在我们负责任地行使这些自由,并避免将其用作淫秽、诽谤、谋杀、扰乱公共秩序、煽动骚乱和叛乱以及其他非法行为的幌子时才有保障。法院始终有责任在合法与非法行使自由之间、在对社会福祉和安全至关重要的控制与不必要地侵犯受保护的个人自由领域的控制之间划清界限。没有任何政府的义务比这更重要或更困难。

Rights Versus Duties Rights are never absolute. Furthermore, rights involve duties. The right to freedoms involves the duty of respecting the freedoms of others, whether these concern their choices of religion, political party, economic philosophy, or place of residence. Our freedoms are guaranteed only so long as we exercise them responsibly and refrain from using them as a cloak for obscenity, slander and libel, murder, public nuisances, incitement to riot and insurrection, and other unlawful acts. It is always the duty of the courts to draw a line between the legitimate and the illegitimate exercise of freedom, between controls essential for the welfare and safety of society and controls that unnecessarily invade the area of protected personal freedoms. No duty of government is more important or more difficult than this one.

在个人不可剥夺的权利和自由与保护他人权利和自由所需的控制之间,没有简单的方法可以划出一条明确的界限。许多人,包括一些受人尊敬的律师和法官,认为近年来最高法院在捍卫个人公民权利的努力中,对犯罪嫌疑人的权利比对其所谓受害者的权利更加关注。其他同样受人尊敬的批评人士则为最高法院的判决辩护,理由是保护可能无辜的被告需要严格遵守正确的法律程序。然而,自1985年以来,最高法院开始通过赋予警方更多权利来严厉打击犯罪分子。美国的“9·11”恐怖袭击事件促成了《爱国者法案》的通过,该法案赋予政府拘留涉嫌恐怖主义动机的个人的重大权力。根据这项法律,可以无限期地拘留这些被拘留者,而无需对他们提出具体的罪行指控或允许他们与律师交谈。 《爱国者法案》得到了专家们的褒贬不一的评价,而且随着“黑人的命也是命”运动爆发后公众对警察的看法发生变化,未来几年对该法案的裁决很可能会发生变化。

There is no simple way of drawing a hard-and-fast line between the inalienable rights and freedoms of the individual and the controls required to protect the rights and freedoms of others. Many people, including a number of respected lawyers and judges, feel that in recent years the Supreme Court, in its efforts to guard the civil rights of individuals, has shown more concern for the rights of those accused of crime than for the rights of their alleged victims. Other critics, equally respected, defend the Court’s decisions on the ground that protection of accused persons who may be innocent requires strict adherence to correct legal procedures. Since 1985, however, the Supreme Court has begun to crack down on criminals by giving the police more rights. The 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States led to the passage of the Patriot Act, which gives the government significant power to detain individuals suspected of terrorist motives. Under this law, it is possible to keep these detainees for an indefinite period without charging them with a specific crime or allowing them to speak with a lawyer. The Patriot Act received mixed reviews from pundits, and with changing public opinion toward the police in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, there very well may be a changed ruling on the act in the coming years.

图 16.3显示了美国政府体制下,旨在保护被告免受不公正审判的基本权利。其中一项重要保护是陪审团审判权。在刑事案件中,定罪需要一致同意。(有些州对民事案件的判决不要求一致同意。)

Figure 16.3 shows the basic rights that, under our US system of government, are designed to protect an accused person against an unfair trial. One great protection is the right to trial by jury. In criminal cases, conviction requires a unanimous decision. (Some states do not require unanimity for deciding civil cases.)

现行宪法的成长美国政府是宪政政府,我们美国人为我们的成文宪法感到自豪。在英国,民主政府及其所依据的基本原则发展缓慢,因此人们认为没有必要制定一份正式的书面文件来表达这些原则。但在美国,一个新的国家必须突然从十三个独立的殖民地或州中诞生,解决这个问题的唯一办法就是以书面形式起草一份正式协议,描述新政府的结构和权力,并表达其所依据的原则。由于我们长期以来成功地运用这部成文宪法,我们或许已经意识到,除非基本政治原则得到正式商定并妥善记录,否则不能相信它们能够为政府提供框架。

Growth of the Living Constitution US government is a constitutional government, and we Americans are proud of our written Constitution. In Great Britain, democratic government and the fundamental principles on which it is based developed slowly, so that no need was felt for a formal written document expressing these principles. But in the United States, a new nation had to be suddenly created out of thirteen independent colonies or states, and the only solution for this problem was to draw up in writing a formal agreement describing the structure and powers of the new government and also expressing the principles on which it was based. Because of our long and successful experience with this written Constitution, we have perhaps come to feel that fundamental political principles cannot be trusted to provide a framework for government unless they have been formally agreed on and duly recorded.

然而,成文宪法的僵化之处在于它无法轻易修改。美国宪法第五条规定的修正案程序规定了两种提出修正案的方法和两种批准修正案的方法。修正案可以由国会两院三分之二的议员提出(这是迄今为止唯一使用的方法),也可以由三分之二的州请愿召开制宪会议。许多州都要求召开这样的制宪会议,尽管大多数观察家认为,同意向国会请愿召开此类会议的州不会多达三分之二。修正案一旦提出,可以由四分之三的州的立法机构批准(除一次外,其他所有州都采用过这种方法),或者由四分之三的州召开制宪会议批准(批准第二十一修正案的方法)。设立该程序是为了确保文件的完整性不会因公众和政府舆论的瞬息万变而频繁修改而受到损害。

A written constitution is, however, rigid in that it cannot be easily amended. The amendment procedure stated in Article V of the US Constitution provides for two methods of proposing and two methods of ratifying amendments. They may be proposed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress (the only method ever used to date) or by a constitutional convention called on the petition of two-thirds of the states. A number of states have called for such a constitutional convention, although most observers do not believe as many as two-thirds of the states would agree to petition Congress to call such a convention. Once proposed, amendments may be ratified by legislatures in three-fourths of the states (the method used all but once) or by conventions in three-fourths of the states (the method used to ratify the Twenty-first Amendment). The procedure was set up to ensure that the integrity of the document will not be violated by frequent revisions prompted by transient shifts in public and governmental opinion.

图 16.3公民自由:美国的遗产。

Figure 16.3Civil liberties: an American heritage.

尽管修改宪法举步维艰,但宪法始终是一部灵活的文书。它的变化与其说是通过修订,不如说是通过法院的重新解释,以适应起草宪法者无法预见的新实践和新情况。因此,它已成为一部鲜活的宪法,因为它能够通过多种方式适应人民不断变化的信仰和需求。例如,通过惯例,选举团制度中不民主的因素已基本消除。最初,人民选举主要公民进入选举团,然后由他们选举总统。但很快,选举团候选人就演变成提前宣誓效忠某位总统候选人的做法,因此,实际上,当一个公民投票给某位选举人时,他投的票就是投给某位总统候选人的。

In spite of the difficulty in amending it, the Constitution has been a flexible instrument. It has changed, not so much through amendment as through reinterpretation by the courts, to meet new practices and new situations that those who drew up the Constitution could not have foreseen. It has thus become a living constitution in the sense that it has been able to adjust in many ways to the changing beliefs and needs of the people. For example, through custom the undemocratic elements of the Electoral College were largely eliminated. Originally, the people elected leading citizens to the college and these then selected the president. But the practice soon evolved for candidates to the Electoral College to pledge themselves to a presidential candidate in advance, so that for all practical purposes when a citizen voted for an elector, the vote was for a certain presidential candidate.

国会大厦。© Shutterstock

Congressional House floor. © Shutterstock

尽管宪法规定了权力分立,但全国性政党的兴起有助于实现国家政府的团结。此外,民族主义的兴起、在危机时期赋予行政部门巨大权力的需求以及其他因素,使得总统成为政府中一个强有力的凝聚力因素。宪法的新解释也使得政府职能的扩展成为可能。当人民希望政府在商业活动监管方面发挥更有力的作用时,他们和最高法院发现宪法所列举的权力中蕴含着必要的权威。当新的社会当问题出现,人民要求政府提供更多服务时,人们发现,所需的权力在原始文件中已经隐含地存在。

The rise of national political parties has helped bring about unity to our national government in spite of the separation of powers provided for in the Constitution. Also, the growth of nationalism, the need for giving the executive great powers in times of crisis, and other influences have resulted in the emergence of the president as a strong unifying element in government. Much expansion of government functions has also been made possible by new interpretations of the Constitution. When the people wanted the government to play a more vigorous role in the regulation of business activity, they and their Supreme Court found the necessary authority implied in the enumerated powers of the Constitution. When new social problems arose and the people demanded more government services, the needed authority was again found to exist, by implication, in the original document.

如果你再看一下图16.1,并关注联邦政府行政部门的主要机构,你就会大致了解多年来政府职能的大幅扩张。这种扩张是应该继续还是应该减少,是未来几年必须面对的一个重大问题。

If you look again at Figure 16.1 and note the major agencies of the executive branch of the federal government, you will have some idea of the vast expansion in government functions that has taken place over the years. Whether that expansion should continue or whether it should be reduced is a major issue that must be faced in the coming years.

政治进程

The Political Process

之前,我们描述了民主在理论上的运作方式。我们也触及了一些实践中的例子。我们不应该就此止步,因为正如其他一切事物一样,实践与理论是不同的。在我们这个幅员辽阔的国家,决策并非仅由民主制度本身做出。相反,决策是由一个包含众多影响因素的政治过程做出的,其中一些因素没有崇高的目标——唯一的目标就是建立和运用权力基础。其他因素则发挥着更为有益的作用,但这种作用是早期民主倡导者所未曾预见到的。对政府决策有直接影响的政治压力集团和精英阶层,就是实践偏离理论的典型例子。

Earlier, we described democracy as it works in theory. We also touched on some examples of its workings in practice. We would be remiss in stopping there because, as with just about everything else, practice is different from theory. In our large country, decisions cannot be made by the institutions of democracy alone. Instead, they are made by a political process that includes numerous influences, some of which have no lofty goals—only the goal of establishing and using a power base. Others play a more beneficent role, but it is a role that was not foreseen by the early proponents of democracy. Political pressure groups and elites that have direct influence on governmental decisions are prime examples of practices deviating from theory.

在我们的民主国家,个人通过政治进程影响政府。这一政治进程包含众多决定政策制定的因素,包括公众舆论、政治压力团体、军工联合体、政党、提名和选举,以及最终的立法。我们无法对每一个因素进行全面讨论,但可以提及其中最重要的一些。

Individuals influence government in our democracy through the political process. This political process includes numerous factors that determine policy formation, including public opinion, political pressure groups, the military-industrial complex, political parties, nominations and elections, and, finally, legislation. We can’t give a complete discussion of each of these, but we can mention the most important.

政党

Political Parties

尽管现代意义上的政党直到18世纪中后期才开始发展,但如今它们在民主国家中却已普遍存在。乔治·华盛顿曾建议新生的美国避免分裂成党派,而美国宪法中并未提及政党。然而,随着民主政府的发展,政党应运而生,因为它们履行着两项重要职能:利益聚合和政策制定。它们并非理论的产物,而是实践经验的产物,是代议制民主的必需品。

Although political parties in the modem sense did not begin to develop until the middle or later part of the eighteenth century, today they are universal in democracies. George Washington advised the new American nation to avoid dividing into parties, and they are not mentioned in the US Constitution. But as democratic government developed, political parties came into existence because they fulfilled two important functions: interest aggregation and policy making. They are not the result of theory but of practical experience, and they are necessities in representative democracies.

妥协冲突的利益政党最重要的作用或许就是妥协冲突的利益。在一个充满活力的社会中,许多利益集团相互竞争,争夺政府控制权和有利的立法。他们中的大多数人真诚地相信,他们的纲领代表着正义、进步和普遍福祉,但他们不可能事事如意。任何政府都不可能同时保障大麻的禁令和生产、销售和消费的权利;保障罢工的非法性和罢工的自由;保障政教完全分离和公立教会学校的建立。如果所有因种族、国籍、社会阶层、信仰、经济利益和地理位置差异而产生的冲突群体都拒绝接受任何妥协,那么统一的国家政策将不可能实现。在美国和其他实行两党制的国家,大多数必要的妥协都是在各政党内部达成的。

Compromising Conflicting Interests Probably the most important role of political parties is in compromising conflicting interests. In a dynamic society, many conflicting interest groups compete for control of the government and for favorable legislation. The majority of these sincerely believe that their programs represent justice, progress, and the general welfare, but they cannot all have their way. No government can provide at the same time for prohibition of and the right to manufacture, sell, and consume marijuana; for outlawing strikes and the freedom to strike; for the complete separation of church and state and publicly supported church schools. If all the conflicting groups that arise from differences in race, nationality, social class, creed, economic interest, and geographic location refused to accept any compromises, a unified national policy would be impossible. In the United States and other countries with two-party systems, most of the necessary compromises are brought about within each political party.

政党,尤其是在两党制下,充当着其所属个人和团体与政府之间的调解人和缓冲者。个人和利益集团可以向政党施加压力,迫使其采取他们支持的政策。然后,有组织的政党寻求达成妥协协议,并将其转化为立法。

The political party, especially in the two-party system, acts as a mediator and cushion between, on the one hand, the individuals and groups that belong to it and, on the other hand, the government. Individuals and interest groups can bring pressure to bear on the party to adopt policies they favor. The organized party then seeks to reach compromise agreements and to convert them into legislation.

两党制。尽管宪法并未规定政党数量,但美国通常实行两党制(共和党和民主党)。大多数观察家认为,这种制度比多党制更具可操作性。然而,近年来,两党制导致政府陷入僵局,因为双方都无法——也不愿——达成妥协。例如,唐纳德·特朗普和伯尼·桑德斯在2016年和2020年大选中的政治声望不断上升。总统选举改变了两党制的惯例。此前,各党派需要争取庞大的民众支持,因此他们往往支持温和的哲学倾向。桑德斯和特朗普则吸引了反建制选民,这使得他们的政策议程分别倾向于极左和极右。这导致了两党内部的斗争,并且不时出现建立第三党的尝试。如果唐纳德·特朗普决定在2024年大选中以共和党人身份参选,那么很可能会出现一位受到众多主流共和党人支持的第三党候选人。这样的运动很可能会瓦解共和党。

The Two-Party System Although the number of parties is not determined in the Constitution, the United States has generally operated as a two-party (Republicans and Democrats) system. Most observers believe that this provides a more workable system than the alternative multiparty system. However, in recent years, the two-party system has resulted in stalemates in government, as both sides are unable—and unwilling—to reach a compromise. For example, the rise in political prominence of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders during the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections changed the conventions of the two-party system. Before, the parties needed to appeal to such large segments of the population that they often supported moderate philosophical orientations. Sanders and Trump appealed to anti-establishment voters, making both of their policy agendas lean to the far-left and far-right, respectively. This has led to fights in both parties, and periodically, there have been attempts to establish a third party. Should Donald Trump decide to run as a Republican in the 2024 election, there will likely be a third-party candidate supported by many mainstream Republicans. Such a movement would likely break up the Republican party.

支持特朗普和反对特朗普的示威者。© Alamy

Pro-Trump and anti-Trump demonstrators. © Alamy

同样,民主党内部也存在分歧,一方面是希望建立更加社会主义社会的进步派,另一方面是目标不那么激进的中间派,这也可能导致出现第三党候选人。

Similarly, there are fractures in the Democratic Party between the progressive wing that wants a more socialist society and the more centrist wing, which is less radical in its goals that could also lead to a third-party candidate.

另一个削弱两党制优势的变化是党员的分布。当党员在各州平均分布时,两党制才能发挥最佳作用,这样每个州都有共和党和民主党的组合。例如,2001年,新英格兰州35名参议员中有11名是共和党人。2020年,只剩下一位共和党人,而且她在2020年大选中落败。如今,大多数州都倾向于支持某一种党派,选举结果最终由少数几个竞争激烈的州决定。由于选举人团制度的运作方式,即所有州的选票都投给获胜的候选人,这使得候选人更有可能赢得普选,但却输掉选举,而选举的胜负将由少数摇摆州决定。

Another change that is undermining the advantages of a two-party system is the distribution of party members. Two parties work best when party members are equally distributed among states, so that each state has a combination of Republicans and Democrats. For example, in 2001, eleven of the thirty-five senators from New England states were Republican. In 2020, only one remained, and she lost in the 2020 election. Most states today lean strongly one way or another, leaving elections to be decided by a few competitive states. Because of the way the Electoral College works, in which all states’ votes in the electoral college go to the winning candidate, this makes it more likely that a candidate can win the popular vote but lose the election, which will be decided by a small group of swing states.

党派归属方面一个日益明显的重要趋势是,认同某个主要政党的人数正在减少。如今,超过40%的美国选民自称是独立选民。造成这种情况的部分原因包括:(1)人们不再像七十五或一百年前那样依赖政党给予的恩惠,那时正式的支持体系并不常见;(2)他们希望将选票分散投给不同政党的候选人;(3)他们对政党制度或某些政府活动感到失望;(4)他们拥有如此多的社会和职业兴趣,以至于不再将政党视为一种俱乐部。然而,政党联系的减弱并不意味着人们放弃了投票的特权,以及在两党制提供的选择范围内投票的特权。

An important trend in party affiliation that has been increasingly evident is the decline in the number of people who identify themselves with one or the other major party. Today, more than 40 percent of voters in the United States describe themselves as independents. Some of the reasons for this are that (1) people do not need to rely as much on favors extended to them by their party as they did seventy-five or one hundred years ago, when formal support systems were less common; (2) they wish to split their votes among candidates of different parties; (3) they are disillusioned with the party system or with some kinds of government activities; and (4) they have so many social and professional interests that they no longer see a political party as a kind of club. Relaxation of party ties does not mean, however, that people have given up the privilege of voting, and of voting within the choices offered by the two-party system.

选举

Elections

民主政府意味着公民权——投票权——的广泛扩展。现代独裁政权下的公民也享有这项特权,尽管对他们来说,这项特权被剥夺了权力。选举政府官员和对公共政策进行投票的权利是经过数百年的努力才获得的。我们已经注意到,在早期美国,选举权受到财产和宗教资格的限制。由于这些要求,在1790年,只有大约15%的成年白人男性拥有投票权,而女性则没有。

Democratic government implies the wide extension of the franchise—the right to vote. Citizens of modern dictatorships also enjoy this privilege, though for them it is a privilege stripped of power. The right to elect government officials and to vote on public policies has been achieved by centuries of effort. We have already noted how suffrage was restricted in early America by property and religious qualifications. Because of such requirements, in 1790, only about 15 percent of adult white males, and no women, could vote.

随着时间的推移,美国逐渐废除了财产、宗教、种族和性别方面的限制。世界各地逐渐兴起的趋势是扩大选举权,使所有负责任的公民都能享有选举权。在美国,黑人男性于1870年赢得了全国选举的投票权,当时宪法第十五修正案赋予了他们投票权。直到1920年宪法第十九修正案获得批准,女性才赢得了美国全国选举的投票权,尽管一些州早已赋予了女性地方选举权。美国最近的一次类似运动是将投票年龄从21岁降低到18岁,这通过1971年宪法第二十六修正案的批准得以实现。

Over time, the United States has done away with property, religious, racial, and gender qualifications. The gradual trend throughout the world has been to extend the franchise and make it universal for all responsible citizens. In the United States, black males won the right to vote in national elections in 1870, when the ballot was awarded them by the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution. It was not until 1920, when the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, that women won the right to vote in US national elections, although some individual states had granted them local rights much earlier. The most recent such movement in the United States was to reduce the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen, which was accomplished by the ratification of the Twenty-Sixth Amendment to the Constitution in 1971.

正如我们之前讨论过的,最初的制宪会议的一个重要妥协是设立选举团制度。人民选举选举团成员,然后选举总统。在许多选举中,例如

As we discussed earlier, one of the important compromises of the original Constitutional Convention was the establishment of the Electoral College. The people elect members of the Electoral College, which then elects the president. In a number of elections, such as the election

2016年特朗普总统大选时,普选票和选举人团投票结果有所不同。特朗普赢得了选举人团投票,却输掉了普选票。这引发了要求取消选举人团制度的呼声,但我们不太可能看到任何此类改变,因为宪法改革进展缓慢,而那些将失去权力的小州可能会阻挠任何此类努力。

of President Trump in 2016, the popular vote and the Electoral College vote differed. While Trump won the electoral college vote, he lost the popular vote. This led to calls for the elimination of the Electoral College, but we are unlikely to see any such change because constitutional change comes very slowly, and small states, which would lose power, are likely to block any such effort.

有效民众控制的障碍投票权并不等同于控制政府的权力。世界各地民主国家的选民的投票权在许多方面遭到削弱,其中包括:

Obstacles to Effective Popular Control The right to vote is not equivalent to the power to control the government. The electorates in democracies throughout the world have had their ballot power weakened in many ways, including the following:

  • 冗长的选票给选民带来负担
  • Overburdening voters with a long ballot
  • 仅允许选民参加间接选举
  • Permitting voters to participate only in indirect elections
  • 迫使选民公开宣布他们的选择
  • Forcing voters to declare their choices publicly
  • 提供不充分的投票设施
  • Providing inadequate voting facilities
  • 允许少数特权阶层控制提名
  • Allowing nominations to be controlled by the privileged few
  • 限制可担任公职的人员类别
  • Limiting categories of those who can hold office
  • 进行腐败选举
  • Conducting corrupt elections
  • 使用心理方法引导人们以某种​​方式投票
  • Use of psychological methods to guide people to vote in certain ways
  • 只将由官方政府政党赞助的候选人列入选票
  • Placing on the ballot only candidates sponsored by the official government party

其中一些限制在美国和其他民主国家过去和现在都存在。20世纪90年代初,一些选区,例如科罗拉多州和加利福尼亚州,通过投票限制其选出代表的任期,从而限制了自身的权力。他们这样做是因为他们不喜欢代表一旦当选就会无限期连任的想法。然而,选民们也避免了自己反复选举那些他们足够喜欢的人。关于是否应该废除任期限制,或者是否应该让更多选区采用任期限制的争论,很可能在未来很长一段时间内都会持续下去。

Some of these limitations have existed and still exist in the United States and other democracies. In the early 1990s, some electorates, such as those of Colorado and California, limited their own power by voting to limit the number of terms their elected representatives could serve. They did this because they disliked the idea that the representatives, once elected, tended to get reelected indefinitely. However, the voters were also preventing themselves from constantly reelecting individuals if they liked them well enough. The debate over whether term limits should be repealed or whether more electorates should adopt them is likely to be discussed well into the future.

不投票者在美国,大约有60%的适龄公民在总统选举中行使投票权;在非大选年的国会选举中,只有大约40%的公民参与投票;而在地方选举中,只有15%的公民参与投票的情况也并不少见。在英国和其他民主国家,这一比例要高得多(英国超过75%)。为什么美国人不投票呢?原因有很多,包括选票冗长、认为政治与当代事务无关、缺乏兴趣,或者觉得一票之差无关紧要。

The Nonvoter In the United States, perhaps 60 percent of the civilian population of voting age exercise their franchise in presidential elections; in the off-year congressional elections, only about 40 percent participate; and in local elections, a mere 15 percent is not uncommon. In Britain and the other democracies, the percentage is considerably higher (it is over 75 percent in Britain). Why do Americans fail to vote? The many reasons include the long ballot, the belief that politics are irrelevant to contemporary concerns, lack of interest, or feelings that one vote cannot matter.

抗议投票权变更。© Alamy

Protesting voting rights Changes. © Alamy

或许最重要的原因是缺乏政治教育和经验导致的漠不关心。人们根本感觉不到参与选举过程的必要性。他们中的许多人来自有着长期不参与政治事务传统的家庭。这些人常常被认为是自私和不爱国的,但很多情况下,对议题和候选人的无知才是不投票的主要原因。在2020年总统大选期间,许多非营利组织和地方组织组织了有史以来规模最大的“走出去投票”运动之一,试图确保美国人了解自己的投票权并切实行使这些权利。

Probably the most important reason is indifference produced by lack of political education and experience. People simply feel no compulsion to participate in the electoral process. Many of them come from homes with a long tradition of nonparticipation in political affairs. Such people are often considered selfish and unpatriotic, but in many cases ignorance of issues and candidates is the main reason for not voting. During the 2020 presidential cycle, many non-profits and local organizations organized one of the largest “Get Out the Vote” campaigns of all time, trying to ensure that Americans knew their voting rights and exercised them.

人们不投票的另一个原因是他们认为他们的投票不会带来任何改变。通常来说,他们是正确的——一票之差无法左右选举结果,但在2000年的选举中,许多选票结果非常接近,几票之差就可能改变众议院和参议院的最终结果。在美国总统竞选中,最终胜负取决于谁将获得佛罗里达州的25张选举人票。初步重新计票后,在600万张选票中,两位候选人的票数差距只有约900票,而且关于哪些选票可以计票存在诸多法律纠纷。在那些有打孔卡选票的县,部分打孔选票的数量远远超过了900票的差距,因此总统选举的胜负取决于对这些选票的最终决定。最终,乔治·W·布什被宣布为获胜者,但这是在最高法院做出裁决之后。如果戈尔的支持者多一些投票,或者他们在投票时更加谨慎,阿尔·戈尔或许已经获胜了。因此个人投票很重要。

Another reason people don’t vote is the belief that their vote cannot make a difference. Generally, they are right—one vote does not swing an election, but in the 2000 elections numerous votes were extremely close, and a few votes either way could have changed the result in various House and Senate races. In the US presidential race, the election came down to who would get Florida’s twenty-five electoral college votes. After initial recounts of the votes, only about 900 out of six million votes separated the candidates, and there was much legal wrangling about which votes could be counted. The number of partially punched ballots in those counties that had punch card ballots far exceeded the 900-vote difference, so the presidential election hinged on decisions made about these ballots. Ultimately, George W. Bush was declared the winner, but only after a Supreme Court decision. Had a few more Gore supporters voted, or even had they been more careful when they voted, Al Gore might have won. So individual votes can matter.

公民投票、罢免选举和直接民主在美国,大多数选举都是间接的——我们选举州长和立法机构,然后由他们制定法律。然而,如果举行公民投票,由人民直接决定法律内容,那么决策可以更直接地与投票公众相关。这些公民投票避开了政府架构,允许选民直接参与法律制定。

Referendums, Recall Elections, and Direct Democracy In the United States, most elections are indirect—we elect a governor and a legislature and they then determine the laws. Decisions can, however, be more directly related to the voting public if a referendum is held and the people decide directly what the law will be. These referendums avoid the governmental structure and allow direct voter input into a law.

直接投票方式在加州最为常见,该州允许选民就大量议题发起倡议,这些倡议往往在最终通过的法律中发挥着重要作用。例如,由于全民公投,房产税有所限制;2003年,时任州长格雷·戴维斯被罢免,前演员阿诺德·施瓦辛格当选。2021年,加州民众再次试图罢免州长,但最终失败。

The direct approach is used most in California, which allows voter initiatives on a large number of issues, and these voter initiatives often play an important role in the laws that are passed. For example, property taxes are limited due to a referendum, and in 2003 the then governor, Gray Davis, was recalled and former actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected. In 2021, Californians again tried to recall their governor, but the recall was defeated.

加州的经验既展现了直接民主的益处,也暴露了其弊端。通过公投通过一项议题需要在广告和组织上投入巨额资金,这意味着这些公投的背后通常隐藏着一些特殊利益集团。因此,这些公投究竟是能带来更好的政府治理,还是仅仅是特殊利益集团实现其愿望的另一种手段,目前仍存在诸多争议。

The California experience demonstrates both the benefits and the problems with direct democracy. To pass an issue by referendum requires large spending on advertising and organization, and this means that some special interest is usually behind those referendums that pass. So, whether these referendums lead to better government or are simply another means through which special interests can achieve their desires is much in debate.

第四等级

The Fourth Estate

如今,大多数政客都承认,通常被称为“第四权力”的媒体——新闻业或其成员,包括印刷媒体和广播媒体——与总统、国会和司法系统同等重要。舆论是一个人人都在谈论的通用术语,但没有人确切知道它是什么,也不知道是什么决定了它。尽管如此,舆论仍然极其重要,政治领导人通过听取当地代表的反馈和民意调查,密切关注公众情绪。政客们试图通过发表演讲、选择性接受采访以及允许信息泄露来塑造舆论。在这样做的过程中,他们必须听取报刊和电视的意见,因为这些机构控制着流向普通民众的信息。通过互联网轻松发表个人观点也会影响舆论,但与印刷媒体或电视不同,互联网是一个更为复杂的政治控制媒介,因为它提供的信息往往是分散的,并且充斥着虚假信息。

Most politicians now acknowledge that what is often called the fourth estate—the journalistic profession or its members, including the print and broadcast media—is equal in importance to the president, Congress, and the judicial system. Public opinion is a general term that everyone talks about, but no one is quite sure what it is or what determines it. Nonetheless, it is extremely important, and political leaders keep a close watch on the mood of the public by listening to feedback from their local representatives and through opinion polls. Politicians try to shape public opinion by giving speeches, selectively granting interviews, and allowing information leaks. As they do this, they must listen to the press and television because these institutions control the information that flows to the general population. The ease of publicizing one’s individual opinions by means of the Internet can also affect public opinion, but unlike print or television the Internet is a more complicated medium for political control, as the information it provides is often diffuse and rampant with false claims.

新闻自由是宪法的固有保障,但新闻界也难免受到私人压力团体和企业的影响。媒体之所以重要,是因为它在影响公众舆论方面发挥着至关重要的作用。例如,我们之前讨论过一项法案成为法律的过程。如果提出某个想法的社会科学家与媒体关系良好,并能利用媒体报道这个想法的精彩之处,那么她或许就能更有效地让政治进程考虑她的想法。同样,如果媒体不喜欢这个想法,这个想法很可能很快就会消失。

Inherent in our Constitution is the guarantee of freedom of the press, but the press is not free from influence by private pressure groups and businesses. The media is important because it plays such a central role in influencing public opinion. For example, consider our earlier discussion of the process by which a bill becomes a law. If the social scientist who had the idea has good contacts with the media and can get it to cover stories on how wonderful the idea is, she will probably be much more effective in getting her idea considered by the political process. Similarly, if the media does not like the idea, the idea will probably disappear quickly.

尽管政客们投入了大量时间、精力和技巧来争取媒体的正面报道,但他们往往对结果并不满意。例如,尼克松、卡特和克林顿总统都曾感到媒体的纠缠。尼克松和卡特都认为媒体是他们政治失败的重要原因。另一方面,里根总统直到中年时期都以广播播音、影视表演为职业,被称为“特氟龙总统”,因为媒体的批评不会在他身上留下痕迹。他的个性和经验使他在政治上受益匪浅,他还被称为“伟大的沟通者”,因为他能够有效地向美国民众传达自己的观点。奥巴马总统也展现了类似的通过媒体进行沟通的能力。

Despite the time, energy, and skill they devote to obtaining favorable media coverage, politicians are often not pleased with the results. For example, Presidents Nixon, Carter, and Clinton all felt hounded by the press. Both Nixon and Carter believed it to have played an important role in their political defeats. On the other hand, President Reagan, whose career until well into middle age was based in radio announcing and film and television acting, was called “the Teflon president” because press criticism would not stick to him. His personality and experience served him well in politics, where he was also called “the great communicator” because he could get his points across to the American people so effectively. President Obama demonstrated a similar ability to communicate through the press.

或许没有哪位总统像特朗普总统一样,如此深陷媒体的纠缠;他不断抨击带有偏见的媒体及其所谓的“假新闻”。与前几任总统不同,特朗普通过持续的推文与公众直接沟通,对当天发生的事件做出即时、坦率的反应。这之所以成为可能,是因为“第四权力”不再仅仅是纸媒和电视媒体,而是媒体和社交网络平台,其中包含的渠道比以往多得多。现在,人们可以根据自己的世界观选择精选的新闻推送,获取未经主流媒体过滤的新闻。

Perhaps no president saw himself as hounded by the press as much as President Trump; he continually railed against the biased press and their presentation of what he often called “fake news.” Unlike previous presidents, Trump communicated directly with the public with continual tweets giving his immediate, unvarnished, reaction to events of the day This was possible because the Fourth Estate is no longer just the print and television press—it is the media and social networking platforms, which includes many more outlets than existed before. Individuals can now select curated news feeds to fit their worldview, and get their news without it being filtered by the mainstream press.

特朗普认为大多数记者与权力精英关系密切;他们接受主流叙事,并想方设法破坏特朗普的报道。他认为大多数学院、大学、政府机构和记者都反映片面观点,不愿接受其他观点。无论真相如何,特朗普都能以其他总统鲜有做到的方式设定讨论议程。当特朗普拒绝接受自己输掉大选的事实时,他被推特封禁,理由是散布虚假信息。特朗普的支持者认为,这项禁令不过是主流控制媒体、不愿对双方进行公平报道的又一例证。

Trump saw the majority of reporters as tied in with the power elite; they accepted the mainstream narrative of events, and looked for any way they could undermine Trump’s accounts of events. He saw most colleges, universities, government agencies, and reporters as reflecting a one-sided view that was not open to other views. Whatever the truth, Trump was able to set the discussion agenda in ways that few other presidents have. When Trump refused to accept that he lost the election, he was banned from Twitter as a provider of false information. Trump supporters saw that ban as just another instance of mainstream control of the media and unwillingness to provide fair coverage of both sides.

政治精英

The Political Elite

美国的一个基本假设是人人生而平等,但假设实践遵循这一理想则错误。实际上,美国存在着一群精英,他们的感受、愿望和影响力比其他群体更有分量,这要么是因为他们能够运用金钱或权力来影响事态发展,要么是因为他们能够直接接触当权者。如果他们对正在发生的事情感到不满,就会联系美国高级官员,表达他们的担忧。

A basic assumption in the United States is that all individuals are created equal, but it would be a mistake to assume that practice follows that ideal. In practice, there is an elite in the United States whose feelings, aspirations, and influence carry more weight than those of other groups, either because they can use money or power to influence events or because they have direct access to those in power. If they don’t like what is going on, they contact a high-ranking US official to let him or her know their concerns.

谁是美国的政治和经济精英?任何名单都必须包括总统、美国参议员和众议员、州长、州参议员、州众议员以及政府高层管理人员(按照美国公务员等级划分,他们的级别应为15级及以上)。此外,我们还需要加上大约1.5万到2万名高管,他们掌握着企业和非营利组织负责人的大部分权力;顶级金融机构、律师事务所、大学和宗教团体的高管;法官;以及作家、医生和科学家等独立专业人士。粗略估计,我们社会的政治精英人数约为20万人。

Who are the political and economic elite in the United States? Any list would have to include the president, US senators and representatives, governors, state senators, state representatives, and high executives in government, which, using US civil service rankings, would be Grade Service Level 15 and above. To these we would need to add approximately 15,000 to 20,000 executives who hold most of the power afforded by their positions as heads of business and nonprofit enterprises; the executives of the top financial organizations, law firms, universities, and religious bodies; judges; and independent professionals such as writers, doctors, and scientists. Roughly estimated, we would arrive at about 200,000 people who would have to be considered the political elite of our society.

政治精英是否统治着我们的国家并阻碍民主?这值得商榷。例如,以2016年大选为例,最初的推定候选人——党内精英的选择——是前总统的儿子和兄弟杰布·布什和前总统的妻子希拉里·克林顿。尽管两党精英都支持他们,但初选选民却并不支持他们。自称社会主义者的伯尼·桑德斯在希拉里·克林顿和四年后的乔·拜登面前都曾面临严峻挑战,最终他们都赢得了民主党提名。

Does the political elite rule our country and thwart democracy? That’s debatable. For example, consider the 2016 election, when the initial presumptive nominees—the choices of the party elites—were Jeb Bush, son and brother of former presidents, and Hillary Clinton, wife of a former president. Despite the fact that the elites in the respective parties favored them, the primary voters did not. Bernie Sanders, a self-declared socialist, gave Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden four years later, strong challenges, before they each won the Democratic nomination.

杰布·布什从未激起共和党初选选民的兴趣,他以唐纳德·特朗普的身份退出竞选。许多共和党精英拒绝支持特朗普,一方面是因为他在竞选过程中的行为——对其他候选人进行人身攻击,在辩论中发表粗俗的评论(例如影射其生殖器大小),另一方面是因为他缺乏政策知识。许多共和党初选选民正是喜欢特朗普,因为他身上没有精英的架子——他能以其他共和党候选人所没有的方式与普通民众打交道。桑德斯和特朗普在初选中的表现,体现了精英权力的局限性,也表明他们已经脱离了美国普通民众的日常生活。特朗普在2016年当选更是有力地证明了这一点。这反映出美国已经失去了整体社会凝聚力,选民对传统美国政府的不信任。 2020年,主流民主党候选人乔·拜登赢得大选,承诺致力于团结国家,但他的早期行动在共和党反对派看来具有很强的党派性,因为他试图满足民主党进步派的要求。

Jeb Bush never excited Republican primary voters and he dropped out of the race as Donald Trump, a candidate that many of the Republican elite refused to support both because of his behavior on the campaign trail—attacking other candidates personally and making crude comments during debates (such as an innuendo about the size of his genitalia)—and because of his lack of knowledge of policy issues. Many Republican primary voters liked Trump precisely because he didn’t have those elite airs about him—he related to real people in a way that other Republican candidates didn’t. Sanders’ and Trump’s performance in the primaries is a demonstration of the limits of power of the elite, and also an indication of how they have lost touch with the average person in the United States. Trump’s election in 2016 was an even stronger indication of this. It reflected the fact that the United States has lost its overall social cohesion, and that voters distrust traditional US government. In 2020, Joe Biden, a mainstream Democratic candidate, won election promising to work to unite the country, but his early actions seemed highly partisan to the Republican opposition, as he tried to meet the demands of the progressive wing of the Democratic party.

军工联合体和压力集团

The Military-Industrial Complex and Pressure Groups

在一个充满活力的民主国家,不同群体之间的划分往往不像表面看起来那么泾渭分明。一个很好的例子就是所谓的“军工复合体”,即“联结”军队、五角大楼和国防工业之间的协同作用。该术语最初由刚刚结束总统任期的德怀特·艾森豪威尔于1961年提出。他在告别广播和电视讲话中说道:

In a living democracy, the division among the various groups is often not as clear-cut as it seems. A good example of this is what is often called the military-industrial complex, the nexus between the armed forces, the Pentagon, and defense industries. The term was originated in 1961 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had just ended his term in office. In his farewell radio and television address, he said:

艾森豪威尔的警告在今天和1961年一样重要。一个简单的现实是,国防领域确实有钱可赚(2021年,国防开支总额约为9000亿美元),而一旦有钱,企业和个人就会试图通过扩张各自的领域来赚钱,不惜一切政治手段来获得政治支持。因此,有些武器系统除了为国防企业创造利润、为其员工提供就业机会以及为国会议员争取选票外,几乎没有其他用途。这意味着,一旦开始建造这样的武器系统,就很难停下来。

Eisenhower’s warning is no less relevant today than it was in 1961. The simple reality is that there is money to be made in defense (in 2021, defense spending totaled about $900 billion), and when there is, firms and individuals will try to make money by expanding their particular areas, using whatever political means they can to ensure political support. Thus, it is possible to have weapons systems that serve little purpose other than to make profits for defense firms, jobs for their workers, and votes for congress people. This means that once the building of such a weapons system is begun, it is extremely hard to stop.

当然,并非只有工业界和军方会联合起来,形成压力集团,以维持其项目的延续。其他类型项目的倡导者也会形成压力集团。但武器系统的潜在危害如此巨大,以至于军工复合体值得特别关注。

Of course, it is not only industry and the military that combine to create pressure groups for continuation of their programs. Advocates of other kinds of programs also form pressure groups. But the potential damage from weapons systems is so great that the military-industrial complex deserves special mention.

群体互动的另一种方式是通过组织起来影响政治进程的压力团体。压力团体在塑造公众舆论方面发挥着重要作用。除了施加间接影响外,他们还常常试图直接影响立法者。因此,压力团体填补了两党制的空白,使拥有共同利益的人们能够向政府请愿,以纠正不满情绪,并在许多具体问题上表达自己的意愿。通过游说团体,他们让国家和州立法机构及行政部门了解他们所代表的民众真正希望从政府获得什么。压力团体也对运转良好的民主制度构成威胁,因为某些特殊利益集团可能变得过于强大,以至于如果公众不加以警惕,他们就会挫败多数人的意愿,从而阻碍由多数人组成、为多数人服务的政府。

Another way in which groups interact is by means of pressure groups that have organized to influence the political process. Pressure groups play an important role in trying to shape public opinion. In addition to exerting indirect influence, they often try to influence legislators directly. Thus, pressure groups fill a gap in a two-party system, enabling people with common interests to petition government for redress of grievances and to make their will known on many specific issues. Through the use of lobbyists, they keep national and state legislators and executives informed about what the people they represent really want from government. They also present a threat to well-functioning democracies in that certain special interests may become so powerful that, unless the public is alert, they frustrate the will of the majority and thus obstruct government by and for the many.

© Matt Wuerker/Politic Universal Uclick

© Matt Wuerker/Politic Universal Uclick

幸运的是,一个强大的利益集团(例如工会)往往会被另一个强大的利益集团(例如企业)所制衡。然而,某些缺乏有效组织的利益集团,例如农场雇佣工人和消费者,往往会受到压力集团式政府的损害。但说消费者可能受到压力集团活动的损害,只是说公共利益可能受损的一种说法,因为每个人都是消费者。

Fortunately, one powerful interest group (such as organized labor) is often balanced by another powerful interest group (such as business). However, certain interest groups that lack effective organization, such as hired farm labor and consumers, tend to suffer from pressure-group government. But to say that consumers are likely to suffer from the activities of pressure groups is only one way of saying that the public interest is likely to suffer, for everybody is a consumer.

政治行动委员会。随着政治行动委员会( PAC)的出现,特殊利益压力集团带来的问题以一种新的方式浮现出来。PAC本质上是由个人设立的竞选委员会,为特定的政治目的筹集资金。它们的出现源于1974年修订的联邦选举法限制了个人向候选人捐款的金额。根据该法,个人捐款人只能向候选人的初选和大选活动捐款1000美元,而政治行动委员会(PAC)可以分别向候选人的初选和大选活动捐款5000美元。

Political Action Committees The problems presented by special-interest pressure groups have surfaced in a new way with the advent of political action committees (PACs). PACs essentially are campaign committees established by individuals to raise money for particular political purposes. They sprang up as a result of the revised 1974 federal election laws that limited the amount of money individuals were allowed to contribute to a candidate. Under the law, an individual contributor could give only $1,000 to a candidate’s primary and general election campaigns, whereas a PAC could give $5,000 to each.

2002年,国会通过了《两党竞选改革法案》(BCRA)。该法案取消了所有向全国性政党捐赠的软钱,但将允许的硬钱捐赠额度翻了一番。该法案还涉及议题广告,对使用软钱(捐赠给政党而非个人的钱)支付的广告进行了限制。该法案要求,任何在初选前三十天和大选前六十天内播出的支持特定候选人的广告都必须使用硬钱支付。然而,政党可以在该截止日期之前随意支出。2010年,美国最高法院裁定该法案侵犯了企业和工会根据第一修正案享有的言论自由权,并且它们用于支持候选人当选的支出不应受到限制,从而降低了该法案的效力。这导致了所谓的超级政治行动委员会(SuperPAC)的成立,它们的支出在最近的选举中发挥了重要作用。

In 2002, the Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA). This law eliminated all soft money donations to the national parties; however, it doubled the allowable hard money contribution. The act also addressed issue ads, placing a limit on advertisements paid for with soft money—money contributed to political parties rather than to individuals. The act requires that any ad that supports a specific candidate aired within thirty days before a primary election and sixty days before a general election must be paid for with hard money. However, parties are free to spend whatever they want before that cutoff. In 2010, the effectiveness of this act was reduced when the US Supreme Court ruled that it was in violation of corporations’ and unions’ first amendment rights to free speech, and that their spending to support a candidate’s election cannot be limited. This led to the creation of what are called SuperPACs, and their spending has played an important role in recent elections.

竞选资金改革的其他近期进展包括美国多个城市通过“清洁资金”法案。“清洁资金”选举提案旨在为那些能够通过签名和小额捐款展现足够公众支持的候选人提供公共资金。这些候选人必须同意附加条款,限制外部捐款和使用个人资金资助竞选活动。

Other recent advancements in campaign finance reform include the passage of “Clean Money” bills in several US cities. A Clean Money election proposes to publicly finance candidates who can show enough public support through signatures and small donations. These candidates must agree to additional stipulations that limit outside donations and use of personal money to finance the election campaign.

总统选举实行自愿捐款制度,纳税人可以在纳税申报单上勾选一项,允许将少量税款用于支持总统竞选。作为公共资金的回报,候选人必须遵守支出限额。在2008年大选中,巴拉克·奥巴马作为初选候选人曾承诺遵守限额并接受联邦资金,但当他意识到自己可以通过私人捐款筹集更多资金时,他决定不接受这笔资金。他的挑战者约翰·麦凯恩接受了联邦竞选资金以及随之而来的支出限额。奥巴马最终以压倒性优势赢得了选举,他所拥有的额外资金很可能在他的当选中发挥了一定作用。在2016年和2020年的大选中,候选人克林顿、特朗普和拜登都选择不接受公共资金,因为他们意识到仅靠私人竞选就能筹集到更多资金。结果,2020年选举周期打破了竞选资金纪录:联邦竞选活动支出超过110亿美元。

A voluntary funding system is in place for presidential elections in which taxpayers are allowed to check a box on their tax returns that allows a small amount of their tax payments to support presidential campaigns. In return for public money, candidates are required to adhere to spending limits. In the 2008 election, Barack Obama, who, as a primary candidate, had promised to abide by the limits and accept the federal money, decided not to accept the money when it became clear that he could raise far more through private donations. His challenger, John McCain, accepted the federal campaign money and the spending limits that went along with it. Obama won the election decisively, and the additional money he had may well have played a part in his election. In the 2016 and 2020 elections, candidates Clinton, Trump, and Biden opted against the public money, realizing they could raise far more from private campaigning alone. As a result, the 2020 election cycle broke campaign funding records: federal campaigns spent over $11 billion.

一些作者认为,抵御特殊利益集团最有效的方法是组织其他群体来制衡现有群体。该理论的弱点在于,如果大量民众无法有效地组织起来保护自己,那么公众的整体利益——这或许是每个群体最核心的利益——往往会被忽视。

Some writers maintain that the most effective defense against special-interest groups is the organization of still other groups to check and balance those that now exist. The weakness of this theory is that if great numbers of people cannot organize effectively to protect themselves, the general interests of the public—which may constitute the most vital interests of every group—often are neglected.

民主政治进程的评估

Evaluation of the Democratic Political Process

美国的政治进程错综复杂,令人困惑,充满挑战。赢得一个重要职位的选举需要时间、精力、金钱和耐心;从一个想法到一项法律的颁布往往是一段漫长的旅程。为了实现这些目标,必须克服重重障碍,跨越选举惰性的沙漠。妥协是必要的,许多相互冲突的利益集团必须做出让步,每个利益集团的目标都略有不同。在这一过程中,必须考虑到无知和其他人类的局限性。欺诈和徇私舞弊始终是危险的。但民主也为普通民众提供了自治的机会,这无疑是一项挑战。

The political process in the United States is complex, confusing, and challenging. To win election to a major office takes time, work, money, and patience; from an idea to the enactment of a law often is a long journey. To reach such goals, mountains of obstacles must be scaled and arid deserts of electoral inertia must be crossed. Compromises are necessary, and concessions must be made by many conflicting interest groups, each of which has a somewhat different destination in mind. Ignorance and other human limitations must be taken into account all along the route. Fraud and favoritism are constant dangers. But democracy offers ordinary people the challenge of the opportunity to rule themselves.

在美国,民主生活方式已深深植根于我们的文化,并为我们带来了诸多个人和社会益处,以至于很少有人能够真正想象在任何其他社会制度下生活。没有任何其他制度能够赋予我们如此高度的个人自由,或如此有效地保护我们的个人权利。如果我们偶尔抱怨民主的缺陷及其未能达到完美,那只是人之常情。当我们考虑其他选择时,大多数人相信,美国式的民主正在为我们带来其他国家难以比拟的益处,并且我们相信,如果我们履行自己的责任,民主在未来将提供更大程度的益处。大多数美国人相信,总体而言,我们的政府现在是、并且将继续是一个民有、民治、民享的政府。

In the United States, the democratic way of life has become so firmly embedded in our culture and has brought us so many personal and social advantages that few of us can really conceive of living under any other social system. No other system can give us such a high degree of personal liberty or protect our individual rights so well. If at times we complain about the faults of democracy and its failure to achieve perfection, we are only being human. When we consider the alternatives, most of us believe that our US brand of democracy is providing us with benefits that can be matched in few other countries, and we believe that if we meet our responsibilities, democracy will provide these benefits in greater measure in the future. Most Americans believe that, on balance, our government is and will continue to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 美国于 1776 年脱离英国,并于 1787 年成为一个新国家。
  • The United States revolted from Britain in 1776 and became a new nation in 1787.
  • 《独立宣言》宣称,人民保留反抗的权利,接受统治必须得到同意,政府行为是有限的,人人生而平等,并享有若干不可剥夺的权利。
  • The Declaration of Independence declared that the right to revolt is reserved by the people, consent to be governed is necessary, governmental action is limited, and all people are created equal and are endowed with certain inalienable rights.
  • 美国宪法规定的国家政府分为三个部门:行政部门、立法部门和司法部门。
  • The national government of the United States as established by the Constitution is divided into three branches: the executive, the legislative, and the judicial.
  • 宪法规定了联邦制、权力分立、制衡和有限政府。
  • The Constitution provides for federalism, separation of powers, checks and balances, and limited government.
  • 美国的政治进程是一团乱麻。
  • The political process in the United States is a mess that works.
  • 第四阶层、政治精英、军工联合体和政治行动委员会都在政治进程中发挥着重要作用。
  • The fourth estate, the political elite, the military-industrial complex, and PACs all play an important role in the political process.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 权利法案(293)
  • Bill of Rights (293)
  • 内阁 (293)
  • Cabinet (293)
  • 制衡(296)
  • checks and balances (296)
  • 共同权力(297)
  • concurrent powers (297)
  • 弹性条款(297)
  • elastic clause (297)
  • 选举团(292)
  • Electoral College (292)
  • 列举权力(297)
  • enumerated powers (297)
  • 专属权力 (297)
  • exclusive powers (297)
  • 行政部门 (293)
  • executive branch (293)
  • 联邦制(296)
  • federalism (296)
  • 联邦 (292)
  • federation (292)
  • 第四等级(307)
  • fourth estate (307)
  • 特许经营 (305)
  • franchise (305)
  • 默示权力(297)
  • implied powers (297)
  • 司法部门 (297)
  • judicial branch (297)
  • 司法审查(299)
  • judicial review (299)
  • 立法部门 (293)
  • legislative branch (293)
  • 有限政府 (296)
  • limited government (296)
  • 军工联合体 (309)
  • military-industrial complex (309)
  • 政治行动委员会 (310)
  • PACs (310)
  • 议会制政府 (296)
  • parliamentary form of government (296)
  • 总统制政府(296)
  • presidential form of government (296)
  • 压力团体(304)
  • pressure groups (304)
  • 纯粹的民主(296)
  • pure democracy (296)
  • 代议制民主(296)
  • representative democracy (296)
  • 共和国 (296)
  • republic (296)
  • 权力分立(296)
  • separation of powers (296)
  • 软钱(311)
  • soft money (311)
  • 单一制政府 (292)
  • unitary government (292)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 美国是一个民主社会吗?请解释你的答案。
  2. Is the United States a democratic society? Explain your answer.
  3. 特朗普总统在2016年大选中的胜利如何体现了美国民主的优点和缺点?
  4. In what way does President Trumps victory in the 2016 election capture what is good and bad about US democracy?
  5. 制宪会议做出了哪些重要决定?
  6. What important decisions were made by the Constitutional Convention?
  7. 费城会议做出了哪些重大妥协?
  8. What major compromises were made at the Philadelphia convention?
  9. 将联邦政府与单一制政府进行比较。
  10. Compare federal government with unitary government.
  11. 美国政府的三个层级是什么?它们之间有何关系?
  12. What are the three levels of government in the United States, and how are they related to one another?
  13. 我们国家政府的三个部门是什么?每个部门的职能是什么?
  14. What are the three branches of our national government, and what is the function of each?
  15. 美国政府体制的四个基本特点是什么?
  16. What are the four basic characteristics of the US system of government?
  17. 将总统制政府与议会制政府进行比较。
  18. Compare presidential government with parliamentary government.
  19. 宪法如何分配权力?
  20. In what ways does the Constitution distribute power?
  21. 制衡原则如何修改权力分立原则?
  22. How does the principle of checks and balances modify that of separation of powers?
  23. 司法审查的意义和意义是什么?
  24. What is the meaning and significance of judicial review?
  25. “活宪法”与成文宪法有何关系?它如何跟上不断变化的条件和新问题的步伐?
  26. How is the “living constitution” related to the written one, and how does it keep pace with changing conditions and new problems?
  27. 政党在民主制度中扮演什么角色?
  28. What role do political parties play in a democratic system?
  29. 人们不投票的主要原因是什么?
  30. What are the primary reasons people do not vote?
  31. 什么是“第四权力”?它如何影响我们的政府?
  32. What is the “fourth estate”? How does it influence our government?
  33. 什么是军工联合体?它如何影响我们的政府?
  34. What is the military-industrial complex? How does it influence our government?
  35. 政治行动委员会在立法过程中扮演着什么角色?是积极还是消极?
  36. What role do PACs play in shaping legislation? Is it a positive or negative role?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 请访问www.270towin.com。哪些州的选举人票超过 20 张?哪些州的选举人票现在比 1988 年少?
  2. Go to www.270towin.com. Which states have more than twenty electoral votes? Which states have fewer votes now than in 1988?
  3. 您现在的参议员是谁?他们是哪一年首次当选的?请访问www.govtrack.us/
  4. Who are your present senators and in what year were they first elected? Check www.govtrack.us/.
  5. 使用www.supremecourthistory.org/来了解现任最高法院法官是谁。
  6. Use www.supremecourthistory.org/ to find out who are the current justices on the Supreme Court today.
  7. 美国宪法序言是什么?请参阅www.usconstitution.net/const.html
  8. What is the Preamble to the US Constitution? See www.usconstitution.net/const.html.
  9. 通过www.whitehouse.gov/,了解总统顾问内阁成员有哪些?
  10. Using www.whitehouse.gov/, who is in the president’s advisory cabinet?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 亚历山大,丹。《白宫公司:唐纳德·特朗普如何将总统职位变成一门生意》纽约市:Portfolio,2020 年。
  • Alexander, Dan. White House, Inc: How Donald Trump Turned the Presidency into a Business, New York City: Portfolio, 2020.
  • 克林顿,希拉里·罗德姆,《发生了什么》纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2017 年。
  • Clinton, Hillary Rodham, What Happened, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017.
  • 康拉德,杰萨明和内奥米·沃尔夫,《你应该了解但不知道的政治知识……:重要问题的无党派指南》,纽约:Arcade Publishing,2016 年。
  • Conrad, Jessamyn, and Naomi Wolf, What You Should Know About Politics.. .But Don’t: A Nonpartisan Guide to the Issues That Matter, New York: Arcade Publishing, 2016.
  • Graber,Doris,《大众媒体与美国政治》华盛顿特区:CQ Press,2009 年。
  • Graber, Doris, Mass Media and American Politics, Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2009.
  • Hacker, Jacob 和 Paul Pierson,《赢者通吃政治:华盛顿如何让富人更富,并背弃中产阶级》,纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2010 年。
  • Hacker, Jacob, and Paul Pierson, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.
  • 麦卡洛,大卫,《美国精神:我们是谁以及我们代表什么》,纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2017 年。
  • McCullough, David, The American Spirit: Who We Are and What We Stand For, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017.
  • 麦克杜格尔,沃尔特·A.,《自由就在眼前:一部新的美国历史,1585-1838》(拟议的三卷中的第 1 卷),纽约:哈珀柯林斯出版社,2004 年。
  • McDougall, Walter A., Freedom Just Around, the Corner: A New American History, 1585-1838 (vol. 1 of proposed 3 vols.), New York: HarperCollins, 2004.
  • Mounk,Yascha,《人民与民主》,马萨诸塞州剑桥:哈佛大学出版社,2018 年。
  • Mounk, Yascha, The People vs. Democracy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.
  • 奥巴马,巴拉克,《无畏的希望:重拾美国梦的思考》,纽约:皇冠出版社,2006 年。
  • Obama, Barack, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, New York: Crown, 2006.
  • 斯科特,蒂姆和高迪·特雷,《统一:我们不太可能的友谊如何给分裂的国家带来希望》,伊利诺伊州卡罗尔斯特里姆:廷代尔出版社,2018 年。
  • Scott, Tim and Gowdy Trey, Unified: How Our Unlikely Friendship Gives Us Hope for a Divided Country, Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 2018.
  • 美国政府组织手册,联邦公报局,国家档案和记录服务处,华盛顿特区:政府印刷局,每年发行。
  • United States Government Organization Manual, Office of the Federal Register, National Archives and Records Service, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, issued annually.
  • 伍德,戈登·S.,《革命人物:建国先贤的与众不同之处》,纽约:企鹅出版社,2006 年。
  • Wood, Gordon S., Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different, New York: Penguin, 2006.
  • 伍德沃德,鲍勃,《愤怒》,纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2020 年。
  • Woodward, Bob, Rage, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2020.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第五部分 经济与社会

Part V Economics and Society

第十七 经济活动组织

chapter 17 The Organization of Economic Activities

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-17

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-17

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 定义经济问题
  • Define the economic problem
  • 讨论我们的经济从封建主义到重商主义、市场经济、务实的市场经济的演变
  • Discuss the evolution of our economy from feudalism to mercantilism, to a market economy, and to a pragmatic market economy
  • 总结社会主义思想的历史发展
  • Summarize the historical development of socialist thought
  • 区分计划经济和非计划经济
  • Distinguish between a planned and an unplanned economy
  • 解释供给需求这两个术语,并用它们来解释市场经济如何运作
  • Explain the terms supply and demand, and use them to explain how a market economy works
  • 解释为什么所有现代经济体都是务实的市场经济体
  • Explain why all modern economies are pragmatic market economies

传统上,经济学是社会科学的一个分支,关注人们如何为自己提供物质产品和服务。近年来,经济学的范围不断扩大,并将自己定位为一门关于选择的科学。它探讨人们和社会如何在各种目标之间分配资源以实现其需求。因此,我们将经济学定义为研究人们满足自身需求的社会组织的学科。在满足这些需求的过程中,经济制度不断发展,这些制度以社会制度管理个人社会互动的方式管理着个人的经济互动。这些经济制度包括政府组织、商业公司、工会以及促进商品生产、分配和消费的法律。要理解经济如何运作,我们必须熟悉这些制度。在本章中,我们将探讨经济体的组织方式。在此之前,由于经济学家往往比其他社会科学家更积极地扮演政策顾问的角色,因此,我们先简要地了解一下经济学家如何处理问题。

Traditionally, economics was that branch of social science concerned with the ways in which people provided themselves with material goods and services. More recently, economics has broadened its scope and sees itself as the science of choice. It considers how people and societies allocate resources among alternative ends to achieve their wants. Thus, we will define economics as the study of the social organization through which people satisfy their wants. In the process of satisfying these wants, economic institutions develop that govern individuals’ economic interactions in the same way that social institutions govern individuals’ social interactions. These economic institutions include government organizations, business firms, unions, and the laws that facilitate the production, distribution, and consumption of goods. To understand how an economy operates, we must be well acquainted with these institutions. In this chapter, we consider how economies are organized. Before we do that, because economists tend to play a more active role as policy advisors than do other social scientists, let’s briefly consider how economists approach problems.

经济学家用独特的分析方法看待社会问题,这种方法强调理性选择以及成本和收益。他们以一切都需要有人付出为出发点,并认为社会应该明确考虑成本和收益,以便做出理性的决策。经济学家描绘了一个由这样做的个人组成的世界 — — 他们寻找收益,并权衡收益与成本。如果收益超过成本,他们就做;如果收益超过成本,他们就不做。经济学家根据这种成本效益方法定义理性:理性的个人是会权衡决策的收益和成本,并做出以最低成本获得最大收益的决策的个人。经济学家在分析社会问题时扩展了这种推理,认为政府和社会需要建立规则和制度,要求决策者在考虑收益的同时还要考虑法律法规的成本。

Economists bring a unique analytical approach to looking at social problems, an approach that emphasizes rational choice and costs and benefits. They take as a starting point that everything has to be paid for by someone and argue that society should take explicit account of costs and benefits so that it can make rational decisions. Economists picture a world populated by individuals doing precisely that—they search out benefits, and they weigh those benefits relative to the costs. If the benefits exceed the costs, they do it; if not, they don’t do it. Economists define rationality in relation to this cost—benefit approach: Rational individuals are individuals who weigh the benefits and costs of decisions and make decisions that have the largest benefits at the lowest costs. Economists extend that reasoning when they analyze social problems, arguing that government and society need to establish rules and institutions that require decision makers to take the costs of laws and regulations into account as well as the benefits.

经济的本质

The Nature of an Economy

在现代工业社会中,经济关系错综复杂。几乎没有任何东西能够生产出来并提供给最终买家,这离不开各种经济机构的帮助以及大量工人自觉或不自觉的合作。几乎所有商品都是如此,无论是衬衫、电脑、圆珠笔还是冻酸奶。我们满足日常经济需求的能力取决于许多高度系统化的社会安排。没有这些组织,我们的经济努力将在很大程度上是徒劳的,我们大多数人,尤其是在城市里的人,很快就会饿死。

In modern industrial societies, economic relationships are complex. Almost nothing can be produced and made available to the final buyer without the help of a variety of economic institutions and the conscious or unconscious cooperation of great numbers of workers. This is true of almost every commodity, whether it be a shirt, a computer, a ballpoint pen, or frozen yogurt. Our ability to satisfy our daily economic wants depends on the existence of many highly systematized social arrangements. Without these organizations, our economic efforts would be largely futile, and most of us, especially in cities, would soon starve to death.

总的来说,所有满足我们经济需求的复杂社会安排构成了一个经济体系,或称经济体。经济体可以定义为特定社会的人们生产和分配经济产品的社会组织。

Taken together, all the complex social arrangements by which we satisfy economic wants constitute an economic system, or an economy. An economy may be defined as the social organization by means of which the people of a given society produce and distribute economic goods.

经济功能

Functions of an Economy

一个经济体必须履行至少四项基本职能,理想情况下,它应该以能够为社会带来最大利益的方式履行这些职能。它必须确定:

An economy must perform at least four basic functions, and ideally it should perform them in such a way as to confer maximum benefits on the community. It must determine:

  1. 要生产的商品种类
  2. The kinds of goods to be produced
  3. 每种商品的生产量
  4. The amount of each good to be produced
  5. 分配给商品产出的资源
  6. The resources that are to be allocated to a goods output
  7. 最终将货物分配给享受者
  8. The ultimate division of the goods among those who are to enjoy them

此外,经济体应该为经济发展提供良好的环境。

In addition, an economy should provide a favorable environment for economic progress.

经济学和社会科学

Economics and the Social Sciences

在考虑这些问题之前,我们需要考虑经济问题如何与社会科学中的其他问题相适应。

Before we consider these issues, we need to consider how economic issues fit in with other issues in social science.

一些经济学家认为,经济问题是所有社会科学问题的核心。我们不同意。尽管经济问题很重要,但我们并不认为它们是我们生活的核心要素。人们通常仅仅出于社会和文化原因而渴望经济商品(如果你有足够的钱买那辆跑车,那个帅气的女孩或男孩就会和你约会;否则,她或他就不会理你)。归根结底,我们渴望的不是金钱或经济商品,而是幸福(对生活的满足感或满足感)。最近的研究表明,当美国人的年收入达到约 7.5 万美元的门槛后,额外的收入似乎并不会让他们更幸福。

Some economists argue that economic issues are at the center of all social science issues. We disagree. Although economic issues are important, we would not argue that they are the central elements of our lives. Often economic goods are wanted for only social and cultural reasons (if you have enough money to buy that sports car, that cute girl or guy will go out with you; otherwise, she or he won’t give you the time of day). Ultimately, it is not money or economic goods that we desire—it is happiness (satisfaction or contentment with one’s life), and recent studies have suggested that after an American has reached an annual income threshold of about $75,000, additional income does not seem to make them any happier.

虽然经济需求并非重要的,但它仍然很重要。如果你挨饿,或者缺乏足够的衣服或住所,你可能不会快乐;如果你所有的朋友都有新车,除非你也有一辆新车,否则你可能不会快乐。泰特斯,研究经济需求和欲望,以及社会如何满足它们,非常重要。

Although economic wants are not the most important, they are important. If you’re hungry or lack adequate clothing or shelter, you’re probably not happy; and if all your friends have new cars, you probably aren’t happy unless you have a new car, too. Titus, it is important to study economic needs and wants, and how societies fulfill them.

经济需求和经济商品

Economic Wants and Economic Goods

经济需求是指对可以通过劳动或交换获得,并在现代社会中以金钱衡量的事物的渴望。并非所有需求都与经济有关。人们渴望爱、关怀、尊重、健康、幸福,以及许多其他无法用金钱衡量的东西。这些需求可能会受到个人经济状况的影响,但它们并非主要与经济有关。一定数量的金钱以及金钱所能买到的东西对于维持生活并使生活变得有价值是必要的,但除此之外,金钱与幸福之间的关系就不那么明确了。

Economic wants are desires for things that can be obtained by labor or through exchange and on which, in a modern society, a money value can be placed. Not all wants are economic. People want love and affection, respect, health, happiness, and many other things that cannot be measured in money. These things may be affected by the economic circumstances of the individual, but they are not primarily economic. A certain amount of money and the things that money can buy are necessary to sustain life and to make it worth living, but beyond that, the relationship between money and happiness is not so clear.

经济商品是指金钱可以买到的东西,也是我们经济需求的对象。如果我们拥有这些商品,我们就能用它们交换金钱或其他有价值的东西。如果我们想要获得它们,我们可以通过提供足够的金钱来支付所需的价格。在某些情况下,如果我们愿意投入必要的劳动,我们可以自己生产它们。财富就是我们所说的物质经济商品——我们可以看到、感觉到并积累的那种。所有经济商品都以财富或服务的形式出现。

Economic goods are the things that money can buy and that are the objects of our economic wants. If we possess such goods, we can obtain money or other valuable things in exchange for them. If we wish to acquire them, we can do so by offering enough money to pay the price demanded. In some cases we can produce them for ourselves if we are willing to invest the necessary labor. Wealth is what we call the material economic goods—the kind we can see, feel, and accumulate. All economic goods take the form of either wealth or services.

经济商品之所以具有货币价值,是因为它们令人向往,而且稀缺。我们所说的稀缺,是指如果这些商品免费,个人需求的数量将超过其供给量,也就是可获得的量。由于整个供给量由人们拥有或控制,如果我们想要获得比现有数量更多的此类商品,我们就必须自己生产,或者提供一些有价值的东西作为交换,以诱使他人放弃这些商品。

Economic goods have monetary value because they are desirable and because they are scarce. By scarce, we mean that if the goods were free, the amount that individuals want would exceed the supply, the amount available. Because the whole supply is owned or controlled by people, if we want more of such goods than we already have, we must either produce them for ourselves or offer something valuable in exchange to induce others to part with them.

经济商品不一定是物质的。它们可以是诸如管家或医生的服务,而且,服务正日益成为美国最重要的经济商品。任何能以一定金额的金钱换取利益的东西都是经济商品。以服务形式存在的经济商品既可以从物品中获得,也可以从人身上获得。如果人们想要享受房屋带来的好处,他们通常可以选择:他们可以每月支付租金来购买房屋的服务,或者他们可以直接购买房屋,从而获得房屋能够产生的所有利益,直到他们决定出售房屋为止。但是,当我们想享受管家或医生的利益时,我们无法购买这种选择;我们必须“租用”它,因为拥有管家或医生就等于奴役,这是违法的。

Economic goods are not necessarily material. They may consist of services such as those of a housekeeper or a doctor, and, more and more, services are becoming the most important economic goods in the United States. Anything that offers benefits in exchange for a definite sum of money is an economic good. Economic goods in the form of services can be obtained from things as well as from people. If people want to enjoy the benefit of a house, they usually have a choice: They may buy the services of one in return for a monthly payment called rent, or they may buy one outright, hereby obtaining all the benefits the house is capable of yielding until they decide to sell it. But when we wish to enjoy the benefits of a housekeeper or a doctor, we can’t buy this choice; we have to “rent” it, because owning the housekeeper or doctor would be slavery, which is illegal.

文化的经济层面:在前面的章节中,我们已经强调了文化的许多经济层面。人们在适应自然环境时遇到的问题很大程度上是经济方面的。解决方案需要生产环境所需的各种商品;例如,在寒冷的气候下,保暖的衣物、燃料和隔热良好的房屋是必需品。我们改善经济状况的努力推动了技术进步。

The Economic Aspects of Culture We have already emphasized many of the economic aspects of culture in earlier chapters. People’s problems in adjusting to their physical environment are largely economic. The solutions require producing the kinds of goods that the environment demands; for example, in a cold climate, warm clothing, fuel, and well-insulated housing are necessary goods. Our attempts to improve our economic situation motivate technological progress.

经济因素在塑造每个社会的习俗和制度方面也发挥着重要作用。我们许多最坚定的是非观都与财产和财产权有关,正如我们对偷窃、抢劫、欺诈和挪用公款的强烈谴责所表明的那样。我们的大多数社会制度,即使是那些通常不被视为主要经济制度的制度,也都具有重要的经济意义。家庭就是一个很好的例子。当两个人结婚时,他们不仅表明了共同生活和建立家庭的意愿,而且还承担了重要的经济义务,互相照顾,如果他们有孩子,还要照顾他们的孩子。

Economic factors also play an important role in shaping the mores and the institutions of every society. Many of our most firmly held beliefs of what is right and wrong have to do with property and property rights, as illustrated by our strong condemnation of theft, robbery, cheating, and embezzlement. Most of our social institutions, even those that are not usually regarded as primarily economic, have economic aspects of major importance. The family is an excellent example. When two people marry, they not only signify their intention of living together and establishing a family, but they also undertake important economic obligations to care for each other and, if they have them, their children.

标准经济问题生产满足人类需求的经济商品需要资源。生产要素是用于生产物质商品的所有人力和非人力资源。这些资源主要有三种类型:第一,劳动力,即人类的努力;第二,自然资源,如土地、原材料等,它们是人类制造的所有物质产品的基础;第三,资本,即生产设备,包括工具、机器、厂房和所有人类制造的东西,以帮助他们更轻松、更高效地生产最终满足个人需求所需的商品。资本形式的商品并不直接满足人类的需求。它们的重要性在于,它们最终使我们能够生产出比其他方式可能生产出的数量和种类多得多的消费品,而且通常是更理想的种类或质量的商品。

The Standard Economic Problem Producing economic goods to satisfy human wants requires resources. Factors of production are all the human and nonhuman resources that go into the production of material goods. These resources are of three principal types: first, labor, or the efforts of human beings; second, natural resources, such as the land, raw materials, and so on, that are the basis of all the material products that humans make; and, third, capital, or productive equipment, which includes tools, machines, factory buildings, and all the things that human beings have made to help them produce more easily and efficiently the kinds of goods they ultimately require to satisfy personal wants. Goods in the form of capital do not directly satisfy human wants. Their importance is that they ultimately enable us to produce a much greater quantity and variety of consumer goods than would otherwise be possible, and often goods of a more desirable kind or quality.

所有生产资源——劳动力、自然资源和资本——数量都是有限的,而在现代社会中,人类的需求似乎几乎是无限的。我们自己的社会与其他社会相比或许较为富裕,其中极少数成员可能几乎没有未满足的重要需求,但绝大多数人却难以将收入维持到足以满足所有渴望的事物的程度。每个现代社会面临的重大经济问题是如何让稀缺资源尽可能充分地满足其成员不断增长的需求。但是,正如我们在前几章中所指出的,我们不可能无限期地满足不断增长的人口日益增长的经济需求,而不遭遇资源短缺和日益严重的环境污染。20世纪70年代,人们的思维趋势是经济增长不可取,“小即是美”。到了20世纪80年代乃至21世纪,大多数人都在寻求在不减少污染控制、节约和扩大资源利用力度的情况下,实现更高水平的经济增长。截至 2022 年,关于气候变化和经济增长的争论仍在继续,对立阵营包括:一派认为需要抑制或重新构想工业化规模以节约资源;另一派则认为不受约束的经济发展将带来可持续的解决方案。

All productive resources—labor, natural resources, and capital—are limited in quantity, whereas in modern societies human wants seem practically unlimited. Our own society may be affluent in comparison with others, and a very small minority of its members may have few wants of consequence that remain unsatisfied, but the vast majority find it difficult to stretch their incomes enough to provide all the things they desire. The great economic problem facing every modern society is how to make scarce resources satisfy as fully as possible the ever-expanding wants of its members. But, as we have noted in earlier chapters, we cannot continue indefinitely to satisfy greater and greater economic wants for an ever-increasing population without encountering shortages of resources and more and more environmental pollution. In the 1970s, the trend in thinking was that economic growth was undesirable and that “small is beautiful.” By the 1980s and continuing into the twenty-first century, most people were seeking ways to have increasingly higher levels of economic growth without diminishing efforts to control pollution and conserve and extend resources. As of 2022, the debate over climate change and economic growth persists, with opposing camps of those who believe the scale of industrialization needs to be curbed or re-imagined in order to conserve resources, and those who believe that unfettered economic development will lead to sustainable solutions.

节约——无论我们如何看待增长,都应在任何时候最大限度地利用我们所使用的资源——是经济体系最重要的功能之一。确定节约或配置资源的最佳机制是经济政策的根本任务。

Economizing—making the best possible use of the resources that we employ at any time, regardless of what we think of growth—is one of the most important functions of an economic system. Determining the best mechanism for economizing, or allocating resources, is the fundamental task of economic policy.

另一个经济问题

The Other Economic Problem

上述讨论是经济学家传统上讨论经济问题的方式。但在经济学著作和思想中,始终存在着第二个主题,强调第二类问题。正如我们之前所讨论的,人生的目标并非尽可能多地获取物质,而是过上充实而满足的生活,这样当一个人老去时,回首往事时,才能说那是一段美好的人生。当社会发展出能够生产人们所需的所有商品的技术时,会发生什么?当标准的经济问题得到解决时,会发生什么?人们将如何度过自己的一生?

The preceding discussion is the way economists have traditionally discussed the economic problem. But there has always been a second theme in economic writing and thinking that has emphasized a second type of problem. As we discussed earlier, the goal of life is not to get as much stuff as you can, but to live a fulfilling and satisfying life, so that when one gets old, one can look back on one’s life and say that was a life well lived. What happens when society has developed technology to do the producing of all the goods that people want? What happens when the standard economic problem has been solved? What will people do with their lives?

对很多人来说,如今美好的生活离不开工作。通过工作实现某些目标——比如打理花园、写书、诊断疾病、授课,甚至保持街道清洁——都会让人感到满足。做好自己的事情,并感受到被需要,这本身就是一种乐趣。如果没有工作,人们就不得不寻找其他方式来满足被需要的需要。此外,工作在决定一个人能获得多少社会资源方面发挥着核心作用。努力工作的人获得更多。如果没有工作,你就剥夺了这种社会产出的分配方式。

For many people, a life well lived currently involves work. It is satisfying to achieve some end through work—tending a garden, writing a book, diagnosing a disease, teaching a class, even keeping the streets clean. There is inherent pleasure in being good at what we do, and in feeling needed. Take work away and people will have to find other ways of satisfying their need to be needed. Additionally, work plays a central role in deciding how much of society’s stuff one gets. Those who work harder get more. Take away work and you take away that way of dividing up society’s output.

解决标准的经济问题——商品稀缺——使得次要的经济问题——技术创新取代人类就业——对我们来说更加难以解决。17世纪的大多数人无需担心寻找人生目标或发现有意义的生活。获得足够的食物、足够的睡眠和照顾家人就已经很有意义了。

Solving the standard economic problem—scarcity of goods—has made the secondary economic problem—technological innovation replacing human jobs—more difficult for us to solve. Most humans in the 1600s didn’t have to worry about finding a purpose or discovering a meaningful life. Getting enough to eat, a place to sleep, and caring for one’s family was meaningful.

科技蚕食了生活中那些原本意义非凡的方面。农业革命和工业革命带走了许多原本赋予意义的体力挑战。驾驶拖拉机或操作反铲挖土机,你不必拥有强健的体魄。因此,工作的性质从有意义的体力劳动转变为有意义的脑力劳动。体力活动变成了娱乐的一部分——为了乐趣而运动或锻炼。人们加入健身房,聘请体能教练,并创造一些以自身为目的的活动——例如跑步、马拉松、铁人三项比赛——来获得身体上的满足。

Technology has eaten away at those aspects of life that were obviously meaningful. The Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions took away many of the physical challenges that provided meaning. You don’t have to be strong and especially physically fit to drive a tractor, or to operate a backhoe. So the nature of work shifted from meaningful physical labor to meaningful mental labor. Physical activities became part of play—sports or exercising for the fun of it. People joined gyms, hired physical trainers, and created activities that were ends in themselves— l0ks, marathons, ironman competitions—to give them physical fulfillment.

如今,我们正处于一场信息革命之中,这场革命对脑力劳动的影响,堪比机器对体力劳动的影响。如今,计算机的计算能力远超人类,从而消除了脑力劳动中机械的环节。它们的“思考”(处理抽象问题的信息并就其含义得出结论)能力也越来越强,甚至比最聪明的人类还要出色。信息技术对各种思维方式的冲击,对人类来说,简直令人难以置信。随着所谓的深度学习(基于数据中寻找模式的信息处理,这种模式并非基于人类对算法的新编程,而是基于编写新算法的算法),我们人类通常所理解的思考方式将变得像手工耕作花园一样过时。想要一本社会科学书籍?只需告诉Siri和Alexa的第十代替代品去做,它就会出来。对我来说,实用性就到此为止了。然而,随着每一波创新浪潮的涌现,新的工作空间也随之涌现。最近,随着公民数字能力的增强和新媒介的使用,美国的创意和服务业蓬勃发展。

Today we are in the midst of an Information Revolution that is doing to mental work what machines did to physical work. Computers can now calculate and compute much better than humans, thereby eliminating the rote aspects of mental work. They are also becoming more and more able to “think” (process information about abstract issues and draw conclusions about the implication of that information) better than even the brightest humans can. The inroads being made by information technology into all types of thinking is, for a human, mindboggling. With what is called deep learning (information processing based on finding patterns in data that is not based on new human programming of algorithms, but on algorithms that program new algorithms), thinking, as we humans normally think of it, will become as obsolete as plowing a garden by hand. Want a book on social science? Simply tell the tenth-generation replacement for Siri and Alexa to do it and out it comes. So much for me being useful. Yet with each wave of innovation, space for new work emerges. And most recently, the creative and service industries have boomed in the US as citizens have greater digital capabilities and new mediums to work with.

当这些信息革命的变革与正在进行的工业革命的变革相结合时,我们几乎不再需要人类做任何事情,除了在机器和算法完成所有有趣的工作后,清扫和清理残局。经济问题将会得到解决。但社会仍然存在一个问题;另一个经济问题将会恶化。什么能给我们带来生活满足感?社会科学家们很可能将在下个世纪继续研究这个经济问题。

When these Information Revolution changes are combined with the ongoing Industrial Revolution changes, there is almost nothing that we need humans for anymore, other than to sweep up and clean up loose ends after the machines and algorithms have done all the fun work. The economic problem will be solved. But society still has a problem; the other economic problem will be worsened. What will give us life satisfaction? It is this other economic problem that social scientists will likely be working on over the next century.

经济体系的演进

The Evolution of Economic Systems

在整个中世纪,随着不同地区之间贸易的扩大,市场也随之发展。当时的政府并不完善,市场的存在需要与各城镇领导人达成协议。西方政治体制演变,最初由地方领主或贵族控制,后来由君主控制,所有个人若想从事经济活动,都必须获得贵族或王室元首的许可。未经许可,不得从事此类经济活动。

Throughout the Middle Ages, markets grew as trade among diverse areas expanded. Governments were not well developed in those times, and for the market to exist it was necessary to work out agreements with leaders of the various towns. As the Western political system evolved, first controlled by local lords or nobility and then by monarchs, all individuals who wanted to undertake economic activities were required to get permission from the noble or the royal head of state. Those who did not have permission were not allowed to undertake such economic activities.

露天交易至今仍在继续,纽约唐人街卖菜的场景就体现了这一点。

© Clay Banks

Open-air trading continues today, as this scene of a person selling vegetables in New York City’s Chinatown demonstrates.

© Clay Banks

从封建主义到重商主义

From Feudalism to Mercantilism

正如我们在第三章中所讨论的,西方世界早期的经济体系是封建主义,传统占据主导地位,大多数人是与土地和封建领主紧密相连的农民。少数人摆脱了这种模式;这些人包括建造欧洲中世纪大教堂的工人(也是他们赋予了我们词汇“共济会”一词),以及在封建庄园内或附近搭建临时市场的商队。这些流动的工人和商贩在文化和思想从一个庄园传播到另一个庄园,以及在构建现代国家的政治地理格局方面发挥了关键作用。例如,许多临时市场后来成为永久性的,并成为城镇发展的中心。商贩不仅带来了商品,也带来了思想,为农民提供了更广阔的世界视野。随着贸易的发展,人们开始居住在城镇,全职为市场生产商品。

As we discussed in Chapter 3, early on the economic system of the Western world was feudalism, in which tradition ruled and most people were peasants tied to the land and their feudal lord. A few individuals escaped this pattern; these included the workers who built the great medieval cathedrals of Europe (and who gave the term Freemason to our vocabulary) and traders who traveled in caravans they set up as temporary markets in or near feudal estates. These traveling workers and traders played a pivotal role in spreading culture and ideas from one estate to another and in establishing the political geography that evolved into our modern states. For example, many of the temporary markets became permanent and formed the centers around which towns and cities grew. Traders brought ideas as well as goods, providing peasants with a view of the wider world. As trade progressed, people began living in towns and producing goods full-time for the market.

随着人们迁入城市,经济体系演变为重商主义体系,制造业或加工业优先于农业,由政府决定谁能做什么。重商主义体系的一个重要方面是,从事经济活动必须获得地方当局的许可。随着贸易的增长促进了民族国家的发展,商人们很快发现,他们必须获得不断发展的政府的许可。

As people moved into the city, the economic system evolved into the mercantilist system, in which manufacturing or processing was favored above agriculture, and governments determined who could do what. The important aspect of the mercantilist system was that permission to engage in economic activity had to be obtained from local authorities, and as increasing trade fostered the development of the nation-state, traders soon found they had to obtain permission from the evolving governments.

从重商主义到务实的市场经济

From Mercantilism to a Pragmatic Market Economy

始于十八世纪的工业革命带来了从手工艺生产到机器生产的转变,这需要大量的个体在公共场所(而不是分散在小企业中)从事特定的制造任务。工业革命的特点是个人在工作任务上的专业化。它通过技术进步释放了物质增长的引擎,这不仅改变了经济和经济制度,也改变了社会制度。

Beginning in the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution brought about a change from artisan production to machine production, which required a large number of individuals to work at specific manufacturing tasks in a common place (instead of scattered around in small enterprises). The Industrial Revolution was characterized by specialization of individuals in their work tasks. It unleashed an engine for material growth through growth in technology that transformed not only the economy and economic institutions, but also the social institutions of society.

工业革命给重商主义体系带来了经济压力,重商主义体系对个体企业施加了诸多限制,以至于许多原本可能非常擅长某些经济活动的人根本无法从事该活动;这引发了对现有社会结构的紧张和对抗。到了18世纪中叶,对重商主义体系局限性的反对声浪日益高涨。1776年,道德哲学家亚当·斯密撰写了《国富论》,其中阐述了后来成为现代西方经济制度发展核心的经济思想。

The Industrial Revolution placed an economic strain on the mercantilist system, which had incorporated so many limitations on individual enterprise that many who might have been very good at some economic activity were simply not allowed to undertake that activity; this created tension and opposition to the existing social structure. By the mid-eighteenth century, opposition to the limitations of the mercantilist system had grown important. In 1776, moral philosopher Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations, in which he expressed the underlying economic ideas that became central to the development of modern Western economic institutions.

斯密认为,政府阻止个人从事他们天生擅长的事情既无效率,也无益处。他认为,个人应该自由地做自己想做的事情,并且他认为这种自由不会导致混乱。相反,市场那只看不见的手——引导个人行为的价格涨跌——将引导个人的选择,从而使每个追求自身利益的个人都能在造福社会的同时,为最多的人创造最大的财富。那个社会中的人们。例如,斯密认为,当面包师能够盈利时,他们会向人们提供面包,而这些面包能够满足人们的饥饿感。如果面包师定价过高,只要存在竞争,其他面包师就会进入市场,将价格压低至生产成本。或者,假设面包太少。面包价格会上涨,而随着价格上涨,只要人们可以自由地成为面包师,就会有更多的人成为面包师,生产出更多的面包,面包就不会再短缺。然后,面包价格就会下降。市场满足人们的需求,并非因为人们善良或关心他人的福祉,而是因为人们自私自利,追求利润。市场通过价格变化,像一只看不见的手一样引导着人们的选择,使人们自身受益的同时也造福于社会。

Smith argued that it was neither efficient nor beneficial for the government to prevent individuals from doing something they were naturally good at. Individuals, he held, should be free to do what they want, and he argued that such freedom would not lead to chaos. Instead, the market’s invisible hand—the rise and fall of prices that guide individuals’ actions in a market— would guide individuals’ choices, so that each individual pursuing his or her own self-interest would simultaneously help society and create the greatest wealth for the greatest number of people in that society. For example, Smith argued that bakers will supply bread to people when they can make a profit, and this bread will satisfy peoples hunger. If the baker charges too high a price, as long as there is competition, others will enter and drive the price down to its cost of production. Alternatively, say there is too little bread. The price of bread will rise, and as it does, as long as individuals are free to become bakers, more people will become bakers, more bread will be produced, and there will no longer be too little bread. Then the price of bread will fall. Peoples needs are met by the market not because people are nice or concerned about others’ welfare, but because people are selfish and pursue profit. The market, through changes in prices, guides individuals’ choices like an invisible hand, so that what helps them personally also helps society.

亚当·斯密。

© 美国国会图书馆印刷品和照片部

Adam Smith.

© Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

自由放任是一种允许市场在最低限度的政府监管下运作的政策。自由放任政策与重商主义经济体系截然不同,在重商主义经济体系中,政府在决定谁能或不能生产某些商品方面发挥着重要作用。重商主义与自由放任之间的争论一直持续至今。在全球范围内,这场争论与计划经济和非计划经济之间的争论息息相关。在美国,我们看到它目前在关于政府应在多大程度上参与和监管市场的辩论中浮现。自由放任主义的倡导者认为,政府应该置身事外,除非提供一个框架,让个人能够自行开展这些活动。

Laissez-faire is a policy that allows the market to operate with a minimum of government regulation. The policy of laissez-faire was quite different from the mercantilist economic system in which the government played an important role in determining who could and could not produce certain goods. The debate that began between mercantilism and laissez-faire has continued. On a global scale, it is tied to the debate between planned and unplanned economies. Within the United States, we see it surfacing currently in the debates about how much government involvement in, and regulation of, the market should exist. Laissez-faire advocates argue that the government should stay out of economic activities except to provide the framework within which individuals can themselves carry out those activities.

历史上,反对市场的人一直认为市场给人们带来了巨大的痛苦,政府必须控制市场才能减轻这种痛苦。工业革命时期,工资低,生活条件恶劣,人们经常失业,流落街头挨饿。在封建制度下,个人可以依靠社会提供的内在支持,但在资本主义制度下,他们却一无所有。许多工业家喜欢这种模式:对饥饿的恐惧使工资保持在低位,利润却保持在高位。

Historically, opponents of the market have argued that the market causes people enormous pain, and that government has to control the market in order to alleviate that pain. During the Industrial Revolution, wages were low, living conditions were poor, and often people were thrown out of work and left starving on the street. Whereas individuals under feudalism had a society with built-in supports to fall back on, they had none under capitalism. Many industrialists liked it that way: Tire fear of starvation kept wages low and profits high.

市场反对者提出了两种方案。其一是政府应该干预市场,以缓解最严重的问题,并确保市场互动实现一定程度的公平。他们主张保留市场,但要通过法律法规加以管控。其二则更为激进,呼吁推翻市场经济,建立社会主义或共产主义。

The opponents of the market offered two alternatives. One was that the government should intervene in the market to alleviate the worst problems and to see that the market interactions achieved a degree of fairness. They argued for keeping the market, but keeping it under control with laws and regulations. The second was much more radical. It called for an overthrow of the market economy and the establishment of socialism or communism.

推动社会主义19 世纪初,人们对自由放任资本主义的抱怨日益增多。到了 19 世纪中期,自由放任资本主义达到顶峰,许多团体致力于探索和制定替代方案。对社会主义替代方案感兴趣的人转向了查尔斯·傅立叶和罗伯特·欧文等空想社会主义者的著作。他们主张建立新的社区,所有成员都为社区的产出做出贡献,并使用他们所需的任何社区资源。在那里,商品的分配将由社区的决定而不是市场的决定来决定。空想社会主义者认为市场体系存在缺陷,但他们并不认为有必要推翻该体系,也不认为工人和生产资料所有者之间会不可避免地发生阶级斗争。

The Push for Socialism The complaints about laissez-faire capitalism increased through the early 1800s, and by the mid-1800s, when laissez-faire capitalism was at its peak, there were many groups devoted to exploring and instituting alternatives. Those interested in socialist alternatives turned to the writings of utopian socialists such as Charles Fourier and Robert Owen, who favored establishing new communities where all members would contribute to the output of the community and use whatever community resources they needed. There, the decision of the community rather than the decision of the market would be the determinant of the allocation and distribution of goods. Utopian socialists believed that the market system was flawed, but they did not see a need for revolution against the system, nor did they see the development of an inevitable class struggle between workers and the owners of the means of production.

更激进的改革者确实看到了这种需求和发展。这些激进的社会改革者,如卡尔·马克思和弗里德里希·恩格斯,认为市场体系天生就有缺陷。他们认为,由于资本家或生产资料所有者剥削工人,工人们将团结起来,建立一种称为共产主义的新的经济组织形式。在这种组织形式下,每个人将根据自己的能力工作,每个人将根据自己的需要进行消费。因此,共产主义将演变成与空想社会主义者所设想的经济制度大致相同的类型,但社会达到其目标的道路是不同的。在社会主义下,道路将是和平的,每个人都为了社会的利益而参与其中;在共产主义下,道路将是一条反对现有社会结构的革命之路。

More radical reformers did see such needs and developments. These radical social reformers, such as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, saw the market system as inherently flawed. They argued that as the capitalists, or the owners of the means of production, exploited the workers, the workers would unite and establish a new form of economic organization called communism, under which each person would work according to his or her ability and each would consume according to his or her needs. Thus, communism would evolve into somewhat the same type of economic system as that envisioned by the utopian socialists, but the path by which society would reach its destination was different. Under socialism, the path would be peaceful, with everyone joining in for the good of society; under communism, the path would be one of revolution against the existing social structure.

社会主义和共产主义社会主义共产主义这两个术语并不容易定义;它们是随着时间的推移慢慢发展起来的,概念本身的性质也发生了变化,并且持续变化。从 20 世纪 30 年代直到 80 年代末,两者都与我们现在所说的苏联式社会主义有关——在这种经济体制中,政府而不是市场来决定商品的分配和分配。共产主义是苏联式社会主义的一种,共产党在经济中发挥着关键作用。20 世纪 90 年代,随着前苏联式社会主义国家经历巨大动荡,一些社会主义者提出了不同的定义,在这些定义下,社会主义与利用市场分配商品相兼容。然而,大多数人仍然使用将社会主义与政府关于商品分配和分配的决策联系起来的定义。但这一定义的改变并不奇怪;社会主义的性质在不断变化。

Socialism and Communism The terms socialism and communism are not easy to define; they developed slowly over time, and the nature of the concepts themselves has changed and is continuing to change. From the 1930s until about the late 1980s, both were associated with what we now call Soviet-style socialism—an economic system in which the government, rather than the market, makes decisions about the allocation and distribution of goods. Communism was a type of Soviet-style socialism in which the Communist Party played a key role in the economy. In the 1990s, as the former Soviet-style socialist countries underwent tremendous upheavals, some socialists were suggesting different definitions under which socialism was compatible with the use of markets to distribute goods. Most people, however, still used the definition that associates socialism with government decisions about the allocation and distribution of goods. But a change in that definition should not be surprising; the nature of socialism has continually changed.

例如,19世纪中期,法国作家兼改革家、社会主义创始人之一路易·勃朗(Louis Blanc)认为,每个人都享有获得体面工作的固有权利。资本主义未能实现这一目标,因此侵犯了个人权利。最初,工作权是社会主义的核心原则。

In the mid-1800s, for example, the French writer and reformer Louis Blanc, one of the originators of socialism, argued that all individuals had an inherent right to a decent job. Capitalism failed to achieve that goal and, therefore, violated individuals’ rights. Initially, the right to a job was a central tenet of socialism.

拥有工作的权利意味着必须以某种方式提供就业机会,这一原则迅速扩展,不仅涵盖了工作的权利,还涵盖了政府为所有人提供就业机会的手段——通过政府对生产资料的所有权。随着这种情况的发生,政府对生产资料的所有权成为社会主义定义的一个关键要素。对就业的关注也转向了收入平等,而倡导收入平等成为社会主义思想的另一个关键要素。因此,旨在平衡一个国家收入的计划通常被称为社会主义的。

Having a right to a job means that somehow jobs must become available, and quickly the principle expanded to include not only the right but also the means by which government would supply jobs to all—through government ownership of the means of production. As this happened, government ownership of the means of production became a key element in the definition of socialism. The focus on jobs also switched to a focus on equality of income, and the advocacy of equality of income became another key element of socialist thought. Thus, programs designed to equalize income in a country are often called socialistic.

鉴于这种演变,对社会主义缺乏明确的描述。然而,由于我们需要定义,我们以传统的方式定义社会主义,即一种由整个社会承担生产和分配经济产品主要责任的经济制度。根据这一广义的定义,苏联式社会主义是一种特殊的社会主义。尽管社会主义本身并不包含任何政治制度,但将整个社会作为经济产品的生产者和分配者这一视角,很快将社会主义理论与全面的政府计划联系起来,从而与专制联系起来,但这种关系仍有待商榷。

Given this evolution, there is no unambiguous description of socialism. Because we need some definition, however, we define socialism in the traditional way, as an economic system under which society as a whole takes the primary responsibility for producing and distributing economic goods. Using this broad definition, Soviet-style socialism is a particular type of socialism. Although there is no inherent political system associated with socialism, the focus on society as a whole as the producer and distributor of economic goods quickly linked the theory of socialism to a comprehensive plan of government and hence autocracy, but the relationship is subject to debate.

在实践中,社会主义呈现出多种形式,社会主义思想的某些元素也影响了资本主义社会的演进。例如,建立社会保障制度最初是社会主义的目标,许多如今被视为资本主义经济制度一部分的社会福利项目也曾是社会主义的目标。

In practice, socialism has taken on a variety of forms, and elements of socialist thought have influenced the evolution of capitalist societies. For example, the establishment of social security systems was originally a socialist goal, as were many of the social welfare programs that we now regard as part of our capitalist economic system.

我们正式将共产主义定义为一种专制或国家社会主义,其中共产党(一小群不受选举的人)决定社会目标。但共产主义也包含特定的政治元素,因此必须与社会主义区分开来。共产主义包含一套源自卡尔·马克思和弗拉基米尔·列宁等共产主义作家的信念。如前所述,马克思对资本主义的批判比社会主义作家的批判更为广泛;他认为资本主义注定要被历史规律所毁灭。他认为历史是分阶段发展的,每个阶段都有两个对立的要素——正题和反题。每个阶段在历史中都扮演着一定的角色,但一旦这个角色发挥了作用,社会就会发展到下一个阶段。

We formally define communism as a type of autocratic or state socialism in which the Communist Party (a small group of people not subject to elections) determines society’s goals. But communism also includes specific political elements and thus must be differentiated from socialism. Communism includes a set of beliefs following from communist writers such as Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. As we stated earlier, Marx’s criticisms of capitalism were more widely focused than those of the socialist writers; he saw capitalism as being doomed by the laws of history. He argued that history progressed in stages and that each stage had two opposing elements—thesis and antithesis. Each stage played a role in history, but once the role was played, society would progress to the next stage.

在资本主义制度下,马克思认为其中一种对立的力量是资产阶级——那些通过剥削工人来实现增长的资本家。他认为,这种剥削在经济增长中发挥了重要作用,但一旦经济增长为社会带来了足够的收入,他相信工人阶级就会团结起来,推翻那些不再需要的资本家。届时,工人阶级将组成一种共产主义的经济组织形式,其信条如下:各尽所能,按需分配。

In capitalism, Marx saw one of the opposing forces as the bourgeoisie—the capitalists who brought about growth by exploiting the workers. This exploitation, he argued, played an important role in causing the economy to grow, but once that growth had brought society enough income, he believed that the workers would unite to overthrow the capitalists who were no longer needed. Then the workers would constitute a communist form of economic organization, with the following creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

马克思对共产主义经济将如何运作鲜有论述。在实践中,它涉及与社会主义相同的关键点——对收入平等的明确信念以及集中的分配和生产体系。马克思还认为,在共产主义制度下,国家将会消亡,这或许可以被解读为并非行政机制的彻底消失,而是任何使用武力控制人民的需要的彻底消失。据推测,在国家消亡之后,生产将由合作的工人群体在完全和谐的环境中进行,无需任何强制手段。但在我们所谓的共产主义国家中,没有一个国家消亡。

Marx had little to say about how a communist economy would operate. In practice, it involved the same key points as socialism—a stated belief in the equality of income and a centralized system of distribution and production. Marx also argued that under communism the state would wither away, which might be interpreted to mean not the complete disappearance of an administrative mechanism but the complete disappearance of any need for controlling people by force. Presumably, after the state had withered away, production would be carried on by cooperative groups of workers in complete harmony and without any need for coercion. But in no country that we called communist has the state withered away.

卡尔·马克思。

© 美国国会图书馆印刷品和照片部

Karl Marx.

© Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

以下总结了苏联式社会主义被抛弃的五个原因:

The following list summarizes five reasons why Soviet-style socialism was abandoned:

  1. 苏联式的经济并未带来任何成果。
  2. Soviet-style economies were not delivering goods.
  3. 共产党员利用自己的职务之便获取所需的物品和优待。
  4. Communist Party members were using their position to obtain desired goods and favorable treatment.
  5. 社会主义经济明显落后于资本主义经济。
  6. Socialist economies were significantly lagging behind capitalist economies.
  7. 新技术的发展使得政府更难以压制那些违背执政党利益的信息和思想。
  8. New technological developments made it more difficult for the government to repress information and ideas that were contrary to the interest of the ruling parties.
  9. 长期存在的种族和文化差异削弱了社会形成民族共识的能力。
  10. Long-standing ethnic and cultural differences undermined the ability of the societies to form a national consensus.

为了应对这些问题,社会主义和共产主义经历了巨大的变革。大多数苏联式社会主义国家彻底抛弃了苏联式社会主义;其他国家,例如中国,则试图将市场纳入其社会主义制度,在放开某些经济领域的同时,将其他领域置于政府控制之下。还有一些国家则探讨走一条尚未明确的第三条道路——一条既非社会主义也非资本主义的替代道路。

In response to these problems, socialism and communism underwent enormous changes. Most Soviet-style socialist countries dumped Soviet-style socialism completely; others, such as China, attempted to integrate the market into their socialist institutions, freeing up certain areas of the economy while keeping others under government control. Still others talked about following some as yet undefined third way—an alternative path that was neither socialist nor capitalist.

计划经济和非计划经济

Planned and Unplanned Economies

过去,经济体的区别在于它们是非计划的市场经济还是计划的社会主义经济。非计划经济主要依靠市场来控制经济决策。由于它们依靠私人资本市场筹集资金来建设工厂等生产设施,并且生产的任何利润或损失都归这些设施的所有者所有,因此这些社会有时也被称为私营企业资本主义经济。在非计划经济或市场经济中,个人拥有很大的自由来拥有和经营生产性企业,生产经济产品,并发展专门机构(如银行和保险公司)来满足其需求。美国和西欧经济体就是例子。

In the past, economies were differentiated by whether they were unplanned market economies or planned socialistic economies. Unplanned economies were economies that relied primarily on the market to control economic decisions. Because they relied on private capital markets to raise money for building production facilities such as factories, and because any profits or losses from production accrued to the owners of those facilities, these societies were also sometimes called private enterprise or capitalist economies. In an unplanned or market economy, individuals have significant freedom to own and operate productive enterprises, to produce economic goods, and to develop specialized institutions, such as banks and insurance companies, to fulfill their needs. The US and western European economies were given as examples.

计划经济是依赖政府控制的生产和分配体系的经济。在计划经济中,建设生产设施的资金来自政府,生产的任何利润或损失都归政府所有。在完全计划经济中,某些中央政府机构拥有规划、拥有和直接运营所有生产活动的权力。前苏联和中国就是例子。

Planned economies were economies that relied on government-controlled production and distribution systems. In a planned economy, the money for building the production facilities came from government, and any profits or losses from production accrued to government. In a totally planned economy, some central governmental authority has the power to plan, own, and operate directly all productive activities. The former Soviet Union and China were given as examples.

计划经济应该如何运作

How Planned Economies Are Supposed to Work

为了理解计划经济和非计划经济之间的区别,让我们考虑一下它们在理论上是如何运作的。

To understand the difference between planned and unplanned economies, let’s consider how they are meant to work in theory.

让我们首先考虑一下计划经济下面包的生产方式。小麦是在国有农场种植的。中央计划人员制定了五年期的生产目标,并确定了实现这些目标所需的设备、种子、资金和其他投入。一旦做出这些决定,农场和中央计划人员就有责任实现这些目标。农场不计算利润或亏损(尽管中央计划人员可能会考虑这些问题),生产成本和小麦价格之间也没有必然联系。生产目标是根据数量而非经济价值来设定的。

Let’s start by considering how bread is produced in a planned economy. Wheat is raised on government-owned farms. The central planners decide on a set of production goals for a five-year period and determine what they will need in the way of equipment, seed, money, and other efforts to meet those goals. Once those decisions are made, the farms and central planners are responsible for meeting the goals. The farms do not calculate profit or loss (although the central planners may consider such issues), nor is there any necessary relationship between the costs of production and the price of the wheat. Production goals are set in terms of quantities, not economic value.

小麦生产完成后,面粉会被送到一家面包店,这家面包店也与中央计划部门就其五年计划进行了协商。小麦是这家面包店计划的“投入”之一。因此,这家面包店的目标可能是生产500万条面包。拥有4500吨小麦。面包烘焙完成后,送到国有零售商店,零售商店按照政府规定的价格出售给消费者。在20世纪80年代的苏联计划经济时期,面包的定价远低于美国一条面包的价格,因为苏联政府希望让这种必需食品普及开来。

After the wheat is produced, the flour is sent to a bakery, which has also negotiated with central planners about its own five-year plan. Wheat is one of the “inputs” for which the bakery planned. Thus, the bakery’s goal might have been to produce five million loaves of bread with 4,500 tons of wheat. Having baked the bread, the bakery sends it to a government-owned retail store, which sells it to the consumer at whatever price the government tells the retailer to charge. In the Soviet planned economy in the 1980s, the price set for bread was far lower than the price of a loaf of bread in the United States because the Soviet government wanted to make this essential food widely available.

生产过程中还有一个要素,或者说投入,值得一提,那就是劳动力。每个政府生产设施都需要一定数量的工人。一旦计划委员会确定了企业的劳动力需求,政府就会将人员分配到该设施的各种岗位。因此,在1990年之前的苏联经济中,苏联公民毕业后会被分配工作。然而,班级中成绩排名前2%的学生可以自主选择工作。政府还规定了工人的工资。

There is one other element, or input, in the production process that we should mention, and that is labor. Each of the government production facilities needs a certain number of workers. Once the planning commission has determined the labor requirements of the firm, the government assigns individuals to various jobs in that facility. Thus, in the pre-1990 Soviet economy, when a Soviet citizen graduated from school, she or he was assigned to a job. However, students in the top 2 percent of their class were allowed to choose their jobs. The government also set the wages that workers received.

为什么中央计划没有实现其目标

Why Central Planning Did Not Meet Its Goals

社会主义或共产主义经济的目标令人钦佩。在共产主义理论家设想的理想社会中,公民将完全摆脱国家的强制,并乐于承担所有社会责任。社会阶层将消失。每个人都会工作,经济的全部产出都将用于劳动,所有劳动者都享有平等的分享权利。然而,他们分享的并非均等,而是按需分配。如果使用货币作为交换媒介,那么工资大概会根据工人的需求支付。无论如何,某些基本必需品将免费提供给所有公民。

The goals of socialist or communist economies are admirable. In the ideal society envisioned by communist theorists, citizens would be completely free of coercion by the state and would be happy enough to accept all their social responsibilities. Social classes would disappear. Everyone would work, the entire product of the economy would go to labor, and all workers would have equal rights to share it. They would share, however, not equally but according to need. If money were used as a medium of exchange, presumably wages would be paid to workers according to their needs. In any case, certain basic essential goods would be provided free to all citizens.

在某种程度上,共产主义国家实现了其目标。前苏联和中国的基本生活必需品比市场经济体便宜得多;然而,奢侈品却要贵得多。例如,1986年,前苏联一套两居室公寓的平均月租金约为24美元,所有工人都享有一个月的假期。同样,医疗和教育也是免费的。在中国,共产党政府将医疗保健作为首要任务。它设立了“赤脚医生”计划,派遣医生向医护人员传授卫生、个人卫生、预防医学和节育的基本知识。中国还开展了一项面向全民的教育计划。

To some degree, communist countries achieved their goals. Basic necessities were relatively much cheaper in the former Soviet Union and China than they were in market economies; however, luxuries were much more expensive. For example, in 1986 an average two-room apartment in the former Soviet Union cost approximately $24 per month, and all workers were guaranteed a one-month holiday. Similarly, medical care and education were free. In China, the communist government made the provision of health care a top priority. It instituted a “barefoot doctor” program that sent doctors out to teach paramedics the basics of sanitation, hygiene, preventive medicine, and birth control. It similarly embarked on an educational program for all its people.

尽管这些成绩斐然,但中国和苏联的体制都常常存在缺陷。每月24美元的公寓往往需要等待十年,消费品通常实行配给,或者除了在黑市上才能买到,而黑市上的价格高得惊人。医疗保健也常常不完善。各种商品都严重短缺。生产力——即人均产出——落后,经济增长放缓。新技术未能得到发展,因为没有人有动力去开发它们。

Despite these impressive showings, both the Chinese and the Soviet systems often fell short. The $24-a-month apartments often required a ten-year wait, and consumer goods were generally rationed or impossible to get except on the black market, where they were enormously expensive. The medical care was also often inept. There were serious shortages of goods of all kinds. Productivity—the amount of output per worker—lagged and economic growth slowed. New technologies were not developed because no one had an incentive to develop them.

他们未能实现的另一个目标是公平和公正。物资短缺并非人人平等。通过专门的物资供应处,政府领导人和共产党员很容易就拿到了短缺的物资,而其他人则不得不排长队等候。到了20世纪80年代,大多数社会科学家和共产主义国家的许多公民普遍认为,计划经济并没有带来好处。民众越来越不满。

Another goal they did not meet was equity and fairness. The shortages did not fall on all people equally. Through special commissaries, government leaders and Communist Party members easily got the goods that were in short supply, while other people had to wait in long lines. By the 1980s, the general view of most social scientists and of many citizens in communist countries was that the planned economy was not delivering the goods. The people were becoming dissatisfied.

作为回应,中国对其经济体制进行了重大改革,允许私营市场发展,同时共产党保持总体政治控制。前苏联和一些东欧国家采取了更为激进的措施。它们基本上放弃了社会主义计划经济。

In response, China introduced major modifications in its economic system, allowing the development of private markets while the Communist Party maintained overall political control. The former Soviet Union and a number of the countries of eastern Europe took much more drastic measures. They essentially abandoned the socialist planned economy.

市场经济应该如何运作

How Market Economies Are Supposed to Work

可见,计划经济体制问题重重,市场经济也同样如此。我们可以通过考察市场经济下工人的困境来理解美国市场经济的一些问题:他们在经济衰退中失业。在计划经济体制下,所有工人都有工作,都有收入来源。而在美国,人们只能靠自己寻找工作。在计划经济体制下,所有毕业生都有工作。总而言之:那些对市场经济的抱怨,导致人们寻找其他选择,并非空穴来风。正如我们之前所说,这些抱怨的根源在于市场经济造成的苦难,而人们不愿接受这种苦难。

As you can see, planned economies have many problems. But so too do market economies. We can see some of the problems of the market economy in the United States by considering the plight of workers in a market economy, who in an economic recession to lose their jobs. In the planned economy, all workers would have a job and access to earning income. In the United States, people are left on their own to find a job. In the planned economy, all graduates have jobs. The bottom line: The complaints about market economies that led people to search for alternatives did not come from nowhere. As we stated previously, the complaints were rooted in suffering the market caused that people were unwilling to accept.

计划经济的特点是严重的粮食短缺,导致人们排队购买稀缺商品

© Bettman/Getty

Planned economies were characterized by significant food shortages, causing people to line up to buy scarce goods.

© Bettman/Getty

为了更好地理解市场经济的运作方式,让我们简要回顾一下经济学家的市场经济理论。市场经济是一种依靠私人公民的主动性来生产经济商品的经济体系。在市场经济中,没有生产配额的设定。农民、面包师和零售商店根据预期价格和投入成本自行决定产量。如果他们犯了错误,损失的责任在于他们自己,而不是政府;如果他们获利,利润的归属也在于他们自己,而不是政府。工人并非被指定工作,而是自主寻找工作。组织和控制生产的人必须有激励机制,而在市场经济中,主要的激励机制就是盈利的可能性。在遵守国家法律的前提下,任何人都可以自由地创办几乎任何类型的企业。商人可以选择生产的产品和生产方法;他们可以购买原材料、劳动力和管理服务;他们可以将产品出售到任何人们愿意购买的地方,并以顾客愿意支付的任何价格出售。创业的主要问题可能是寻找足够的资金。如果新企业规模较小,所有者的资本加上个人信用或借贷能力可能就足够了。但如果企业规模较大,所有者必须吸引其他人,并说服他们以合伙人身份出资,或者如果是公司形式,则以股东身份出资。

To better understand how market economies are supposed to work, let’s briefly consider economists’ theory of a market economy A market economy is an economic system that relies on the initiative of private citizens for the production of economic goods. In the market economy, no production quotas are assigned. Farmers, bakers, and retail stores individually decide how much they want to produce on the basis of expected prices and costs of inputs. If they make a mistake, they—not the government—are responsible for the loss, and if they make a profit, they—not the government— receive that profit. Workers are not assigned to jobs; they seek their own. Those who organize and control production must have incentives, and in a market economy the chief incentive is the possibility of making profits. Subject to the law of the land, anyone who chooses to is free to undertake the establishment of almost any kind of business enterprise. Business people can choose both the products to be produced and the methods to be employed in their production; they can buy materials, labor, and managerial services; they can sell their products wherever people will buy them and at any price that customers are willing to pay. The chief problem in getting started is likely to be finding sufficient capital. If the new business is small, the owners capital plus personal credit or borrowing power may be sufficient. But if the business is larger, the owner must interest other people and induce them to contribute capital as partners or, if a corporation is formed, as stockholders.

市场经济的制度基础不存在纯粹或绝对的自由市场经济,即政府完全不参与其中——因为自由本身总是相对的。我们有时将美国市场经济描述为自由企业制度,并非意味着任何人都可以毫无障碍地建立任何类型的企业。我们的意思是,在大多数情况下,对于能够获得资本并具备必要个人素质的人来说,组织和运营新的商业企业是完全可行的,并且他们在做出相关决策时拥有广泛的自由。但在某些行业,某些障碍难以克服。例如,在汽车行业,成立一家新公司所需的资本巨大,失败的风险也很高;而在公用事业行业,地方垄断有时会受到法律支持,因为这被认为符合公共利益。然而,自由企业不仅仅意味着创办企业的权利。同样重要的是,已经拥有企业的人有权运营和控制企业——制定政策——但必须遵守政府认为必要且合理的法律和限制。

Institutional Foundations of a Market Economy There is no such thing as a pure or absolute free market economy in which the government plays no part at all—because freedom itself is always relative. When we sometimes describe the US market economy as a free enterprise system, we do not mean that anybody can establish just any kind of business without meeting obstacles. We mean that in most cases it is quite feasible for people who can obtain capital, and who have the necessary personal qualities, to organize and operate new business enterprises, and that they have a wide range of freedom in making the decisions involved. But in some industries, certain obstacles are difficult to overcome. In the automobile industry, for example, the capital required to establish a new company is huge, and the risk of failure is great, and in the public utility industries, local monopolies are sometimes supported by law because this is believed to be in the public interest. Free enterprise, however, means more than the right to start a business. Fully as important is the right of those who already own business enterprises to operate and control them— to determine policies—subject only to laws and restrictions deemed necessary and reasonable by government.

© Gustavo Frazao/Shutterstock

© Gustavo Frazao/Shutterstock

政府必须提供私营企业运营的法律、经济框架和一般规则。尽管政府对经济事务的参与程度有大有小,但没有哪个政府会对私人的经济活动采取完全的自由放任政策。

The government must provide the legal and economic framework and the general rules within which private enterprises operate. Although government participation in economic affairs may be great or small, no government follows a complete policy of laissez-faire with respect to the economic activities of private individuals.

图 17.1展示了市场经济中相互关系的一个例子。图中我们可以看到,生产者(企业)和消费者通过市场相互联系。工人从企业获得收入,而反过来,他们把收入花在企业生产的商品上。工人没有花掉的部分,就存入金融机构,金融机构再把钱借给企业。政府通过三种方式参与其中:制定法律法规来规范个人与生产者的互动;征税并为企业和消费者提供服务;以及重新分配收入。

Figure 17.1 provides an example of the interrelationships within a market economy. In it we see that producers (firms) and consumers relate through the market. Workers earn income from firms and, in turn, spend their income on goods that the firms produce. What the workers don’t spend they save in financial institutions that, in their turn, lend money to firms. The government enters the picture in three ways. It establishes the laws and regulations that govern the interaction of individuals and producers; it collects taxes and provides services for firms and consumers; and it redistributes income.

图 17.1市场经济模式。

Figure 17.1Model of a market economy.

供需

Supply and Demand

在自由企业制度下,市场和价格在组织和控制经济活动中起着主导作用。任何无法在市场上以盈利价格出售的商品都不会被生产,至少不会长期存在;而任何能够盈利出售的商品,迟早都会有人生产出来。

In a free enterprise system, markets and prices play a dominant role in organizing and controlling economic activities. Any commodity that cannot be sold in the market at a profitable price will not be produced, at least not for long, whereas any commodity that can be sold at a profit is probably going to be produced by someone sooner or later.

当价格不受监管且市场竞争激烈时,价格变化会不断调节生产以适应消费,以及消费以适应生产。为简单起见,我们假设竞争市场是指同一产品有许多独立的小卖家和许多独立的买家。在这种情况下,如果人们希望增加某种商品的购买量,由此导致的需求增加将导致价格上涨,从而刺激生产。同时,价格上涨将抑制市场需求的增长。

When prices are not regulated and when markets are highly competitive, price changes keep adjusting production to consumption and consumption to production. For simplicity, let us assume that by a competitive market we mean one in which there are many small independent sellers of the same product and many independent buyers. Under these conditions, if people wish to increase their purchases of a commodity, the resulting increase in demand will cause the price to rise and production to be stimulated. Simultaneously, the rise in price will restrict the increase of market demand.

如果人们决定减少购买量,价格就会下降,从而抑制生产,但较低的价格往往会限制销售和消费的下降。只要某种商品的生产和销售量超过人们愿意购买的数量,价格就会持续下降。在竞争性市场中,价格总是倾向于上涨或下跌,直到某种商品的生产和销售量(按市场价格计算)等于消费者愿意购买的数量。这决定了均衡 价格,即需求恰好等于供给的价格。

If people decide to decrease their purchases, the price will fall and this will discourage production, but the lower price will tend to limit the decline in sales and consumption. As long as more of the commodity is still being produced and offered for sale than people are willing to buy, the price will continue to drop. In competitive markets, the price always tends to rise or fall until the amount of a commodity that is being produced and offered for sale is equal, at the market price, to the amount that consumers are willing to buy. This determines the equilibrium price, or the price at which demand exactly equals supply.

图 17.2过于简单,未能考虑到真实市场中的所有条件,但它确实说明了在竞争条件下商品价格上涨或下跌的趋势,直到需求(人们愿意在特定价格和时间购买的产品数量)等于供给(其他人愿意出售的数量)。垂直y轴测量每蒲式耳土豆的价格;水平 x 轴测量蒲式耳的数量。需求曲线 DD表示买家愿意在某一天在市场上以不同价格购买的商品数量。供给曲线SS表示卖家愿意在同一天以不同价格提供的商品数量。

Figure 17.2 is far too simple to take into account all the conditions in a real market, but it does illustrate the tendency under competition for the price of a commodity to rise or fall until demand, the amount of a product that people are willing to buy at a given price and time, equals supply, the amount that others are willing to sell. The vertical y-axis measures the price of potatoes per bushel; the horizontal x-axis measures the number of bushels. The demand curve, DD, shows the amount of a good buyers would be willing to purchase at different prices in the market on a certain day. The supply curve, SS, shows the amount of a good sellers would be willing to offer at different prices on the same day.

交点 P 表明,根据构建这些曲线的假设,市场价格将趋向于 6 美元。例如,轮胎价格不可能保持在 7 美元,因为那样买家只会买 300 蒲式耳,而卖家会出价 600 蒲式耳。由于存在许多竞争卖家,一些卖家会因为看到销售滞后而很快降低价格。同样,价格也不可能保持在 5 美元,因为在这种情况下买家想要 700 蒲式耳,但卖家只会出价 300。一旦买家感觉到土豆不够卖,一些买家就会提高报价。只有在 6 美元的均衡价格下,供求力量才会平衡,因为在这个价格下,买家愿意购买 500 蒲式耳,这正是卖家愿意出价的数量。

The point of intersection, P, shows that under the assumptions made in constructing these curves, the market price would tend to be $6. Tire price could not, for example, stay at $7, for then buyers would take only 300 bushels, whereas sellers would offer 600 bushels. Because there are many competing sellers, some would soon reduce their prices as they saw sales lagging. Likewise, the price could not stay at $5, for in that case buyers would want 700 bushels, but sellers would offer only 300. As soon as buyers sensed that there were not enough potatoes to go around, some would raise their offers. Only at the equilibrium price of $6 would the forces of supply and demand be in balance, for at that price, buyers would be willing to purchase 500 bushels, just the amount that sellers would offer.

图 17.2确定均衡价格。

Figure 17.2Determination of equilibrium price.

要了解市场运作的方式,不妨回顾两个重要的历史事件:石油“危机”和计算机革命。过去七十年中,石油供应量曾多次急剧下降。每次,市场的反应都是油价上涨。油价上涨损害了消费者的利益,迫使他们改变了消费习惯。例如,电动汽车和更节能的燃气汽车应运而生。结果,油价上涨导致石油需求量下降。油价上涨就像一根棍子,迫使人们减少石油消费量。已使用。同时,更高的油价就像一根胡萝卜,鼓励石油生产企业增加产量并勘探更多石油。随着产量增加,油价下跌。

To see the way markets work, it is useful to consider two important historical events: an oil “crisis” and the computer revolution. Numerous times in the last seventy years, there has been a sudden dramatic decrease in the supply of oil. In each case, the markets reaction has been a rise in the price of oil. The resulting price rise hurt consumers, and it made them change their consumption habits. For instance, electric and more energy efficient gas-powered cars were developed. Tire result was a decrease in the quantity of oil demanded, induced by the higher price. The higher price acted like a stick, leading people to decrease the quantity of oil they used. Simultaneously, the higher price acted like a carrot, encouraging oil-producing firms to produce more and explore for more oil. As they produced more, the price of oil fell.

现在让我们来思考一下计算机革命,它代表了市场对消费者更有利的一面。计算机发展过程中的重大技术突破提高了供应、质量和容量。随之而来的是计算机价格的下降,个人、企业和学校也开发出了新的计算机使用方式,从而增加了需求量。如今,对于学生或专业人士来说,计算机几乎是必需品。供应增加导致价格下降,人们可以用更少的钱获得更多的东西。因此,市场不仅像一根棍子,迫使人们因为价格上涨而改变生活方式;它还像一根胡萝卜,促使人们为价格下降的商品和服务寻找新的用途。

Now let’s consider the computer revolution, which represents a more pleasant side of the market for consumers. Major technological breakthroughs in the development of computers increased supply, quality, and capacity. In response, prices of computers fell, and individuals, firms, and schools developed new ways to use computers, increasing the quantity demanded. Now, computers are all but a necessity as a student or professional. An increase in supply causes prices to fall, giving individuals more for less. Thus, not only does the market act as a stick as individuals are forced to change their ways because of higher prices, but it also acts as a carrot, causing individuals to find new uses for goods and services whose prices have fallen.

现代经济是务实的市场经济

Modern Economies Are Pragmatic Market Ecomies

前述讨论应该清楚地表明,计划经济和非计划经济之间的区别已经消失。首先,那些严格意义上实行计划经济的国家放弃了计划经济。苏联解体后,其成员国纷纷转向市场经济。同样,中国也放弃了大量的中央计划,转而采用市场经济。因此,传统意义上的计划经济不再至关重要。其次,美国和西欧国家在经济中采取的计划和政府参与程度远远超过了市场经济理论的设想。在当今的美国经济中,政府直接或间接地参与到各个层面的经济活动中。想想新冠病毒大流行引发的经济危机。当数百万美国人失业,小企业被迫倒闭时,政府介入了。国会通过了一项两党救助计划,向经济注入了2万亿美元。

The preceding discussion should make it clear that the distinction between planned and unplanned economies has broken down. First, those countries that had a planned economy in the strict sense of the word abandoned it. The Soviet Union dissolved, and its component countries adopted markets. Similarly, China abandoned large portions of central planning and adopted markets as well. So, planned economies in the traditional sense are no longer of central importance. Second, the United States and western European countries adopted significantly more planning and government involvement in the economy than anything envisioned by the theory of a market economy. In the US economy today, government is involved in all levels of economic activity—either directly or indirectly. Consider the economic crisis spurred by the coronavirus pandemic. When millions of Americans lost their jobs and small businesses were forced to close, government stepped in. Congress passed a bipartisan relief plan that poured $2 trillion into the economy.

我们的观点是,今天,各国之间的区别远比计划经济和非计划经济更加微妙。所有现代经济体,无论其历史如何,都已演变为务实的 市场经济体——这些经济体将市场作为配置资源的核心方式但同时也监管和控制这些市场,并在不同程度上改变市场结果。随着对经济的计划性和非计划性本质差异的淡化,人们也淡化了资本主义经济体和社会主义经济体之间的差异。现代经济体是两者的融合,其指导原则更多地是行之有效的,而不是对其中任何一种的强烈意识形态认同。当今的经济比其他“主义”更多地体现了实用主义。实用主义,而不是意识形态或经济理论,已经成为决定现代经济如何运作以及政府参与程度的主要驱动力。

Our point is that, today, the distinctions among countries are much more nuanced than planned or unplanned. All modern economies, whatever their history, have evolved into pragmatic market economieseconomies that use markets as a central way of allocating resources, but which also regulate and control those markets and change market outcomes to varying degrees. Along with the downplaying of the differences in the planned and unplanned nature of economies has gone a downplaying of the differences between capitalist economies and socialist economies. Modern economies are blends of both and are guided more by what works than by a strong ideological commitment to either. Todays economies reflect pragmatism more than the other “isms.” Pragmatism, not ideology or economic theory, has become the primary driving force in determining how modern economies operate and the degree of government involvement.

现代经济体的真正区别在于其制度和历史背景,这些背景影响着政府与市场的互动方式。例如,在中国,大多数人预期,如果政府不利于市场结果,就会介入并改变结果。而在美国,这种预期要低得多。

What really differentiates modern economies is their institutional and historical settings, which affect how government interacts with markets. For example, in China, most people expect that the government will step in and change the results of markets if it not favor those results. In the United States, that expectation is far less.

在中国和俄罗斯,产权和法治远不如美国完善,这意味着中国和俄罗斯政府比美国政府更容易介入并改变他们不喜欢的市场结果。人民的产权由政府决定,政府的更迭可能会改变这些产权。在美国,人们更加依赖所谓的“法治”,它凌驾于任何执政政府之上,并对政府的行动施加限制。具体来说,法治限制了任何政府改变产权的能力。这种限制使企业能够比以往更轻松地提前规划。

In China and Russia, property rights and the rule of law are far less established than they are in the United States, which means that the Chinese and Russian governments can more easily step in and change a market outcome they do not like than can the US government. People’s property rights are determined by the government, and a change in government can change these property rights. In the United States, greater reliance on what is called the “rule of law,” which stands above whatever government is in power, and places restrictions on what government can do. Specifically, the rule of law limits any governments ability to change property rights. This limitation allows businesses to plan ahead more easily than they otherwise could.

虽然我们也看到美国政府干预的例子,但企业经营所依据的法律在很大程度上与执政政府无关,因此可以信赖其相对稳定。而中国和俄罗斯的情况则远非如此。由于法治尚不完善,如果执政政府愿意,法律和财产权更容易被其改变。因此,个人的财产所有权被视为由政府决定。这使得长期规划更加困难,也使政府在经济中发挥着比美国更重要的作用。因此,尽管中国和俄罗斯现在都是市场经济体,但它们仍然有所不同。市场经济体比美国更发达。在中国和俄罗斯,政府对经济活动的隐性控制比美国更强。然而,这种差异是微妙的,并非像过去有时所表达的那样明显。

Although we have also seen many examples of government intervention in the United States, the law under which businesses are run is largely independent of who constitutes the government in power and therefore can be relied upon to be relatively stable. That is far less so in China and Russia. Because the rule of law is less established, the law and property rights can be more easily changed by the specific government in power, if it chooses to do so. So, one’s ownership of property is seen as at the will of government. This makes longer-term planning more difficult and gives government a more important role in the economy than in the United States. So, even though both China and Russia are now market economies, they are different market economies than the United States. In China and Russia, there is an implicit government control on economic activities that is stronger than in the United States. The difference is, however, nuanced, not the stark difference that was sometimes conveyed in the past.

结论

Conclusion

六十年前,关于计划经济还是非计划经济、市场经济还是非市场经济、社会主义经济还是资本主义经济,曾有过激烈的争论。大多数观察家认为,苏联式社会主义计划经济的崩溃表明,市场经济比其他经济组织方式更可取。有些人甚至进一步利用这一事件作为自由放任主义和反对管制的论据。这种论点是错误的。虽然市场经济确实有其优势,但美国经济史反映了市场可能造成的严重问题,而幸存下来的并非纯粹的市场经济,而是政府大量参与的务实型市场经济。美国有政府资助的失业保险、政府监管的退休计划(社会保障)、公立学校,以及大量限制我们在市场中行动的政府法规。我们拥有务实的市场经济,而非纯粹的市场经济。

Sixty years ago, there were enormous debates about whether planned or unplanned, market or nonmarket, socialist or capitalist economies were better. For most observers the collapse of Soviet-style socialist planned economies showed that the market was preferable to other ways of organizing economies. Some went further and used that event as an argument for laissez-faire and against regulation. That argument is wrong. While the market certainly has its advantages, the history of the US economy reflects the serious problems markets can create, and what has survived is not a pure market economy, but a pragmatic market economy with enormous government involvement. The United States has government-sponsored unemployment insurance, government-regulated retirement programs (Social Security), government-owned schools, and an enormous number of government regulations that limit our actions in the market. We have a pragmatic market economy rather than a pure market economy.

当今世界各国的经济体几乎都是务实的市场经济体,政府与市场以微妙的方式互动,以解决自身存在的问题。市场存在问题,政府监管和政府规划也存在问题,社会会就如何处理这些问题做出务实的决策,有时更多地依赖市场,有时更多地依赖政府。

Today’s economies in the world are almost all pragmatic market economies where government and the market interact in nuanced ways to solve problems that present themselves. There are problems with markets and there are problems with government regulation and government planning, and societies make pragmatic decisions about how to handle these, at times relying more on markets, at other times relying more on government.

简而言之,没有完美的经济体系。组织数百万人的经济事务是一个艰难的过程,并且会不断遇到问题。随着新问题的出现,经济体很可能会不断演变,甚至演变成我们尚未归类的类型。经济体系如同文化和人类一样,会适应变化,并随着新的行为协调方式的尝试以及这些新方式带来的新问题而不断发展。

In short, there is no perfect economic system. Organizing the economic affairs of millions of people is a difficult process and will be continually marked by problems. As new problems are faced, it is likely that economies will continually evolve, perhaps into types we have not yet classified. Economic systems, like culture and human beings, adapt to changes and evolve as new ways of coordinating behavior are tried and as those new ways create new problems.

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 每个现代社会面临的重大经济问题是利用现有的稀缺资源尽可能充分地满足其成员不断扩大的需求。
  • The great economic problem that every modern society faces is to make the scarce resources available satisfy as fully as possible the ever-expanding wants of its members.
  • 我们的经济从封建主义发展到重商主义,再到市场经济,最后发展到务实的市场经济。
  • Our economy has evolved from feudalism to mercantilism to a market economy and finally to a pragmatic market economy.
  • 社会主义思想是为了应对不受监管的市场经济所造成的问题而发展起来的。
  • Socialist thought developed in reaction to the problems caused by a nonregulated market economy.
  • 非计划经济依靠市场来控制经济决策;计划经济依靠政府。
  • Unplanned economies rely on markets to control economic decisions; planned economies rely on government.
  • 所有现代经济体都存在市场经济,但不同程度的政府参与和规划,实用主义成为决定经济性质的主要驱动力。
  • All modern economies have market economies that involve different amounts of government involvement and planning. Pragmatism has become the primary driving force in determining the nature of the economy.
  • 苏联式社会主义之所以被抛弃,是因为其经济未能带来预期效益。许多成果分配不公,经济增长落后于资本主义国家,通讯技术助长了异见,民族和文化差异破坏了国家团结。
  • Soviet-style socialism was abandoned because its economies were not delivering the goods. Many of the goods were distributed unfairly, economic growth lagged behind that of capitalist countries, technology in communications promoted dissent, and ethnic and cultural differences undermined national unity.
  • 当供给与需求不一致时,市场就会创造胡萝卜加大棒的政策,引导“看不见的手”让人们去做符合社会利益的事情。
  • Markets create carrots and sticks when supply differs from demand, leading the invisible hand to get people to do what is in society’s interest.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 首都 (316)
  • capital (316)
  • 共产主义(258)
  • communism (258)
  • 深度学习(317)
  • deep learning (317)
  • 需求(325)
  • demand (325)
  • 需求曲线(327)
  • demand curve (327)
  • 经济商品(315)
  • economic goods (315)
  • 经济学(314)
  • economics (314)
  • 经济需求(315)
  • economic wants (315)
  • 节约(317)
  • economizing (317)
  • 经济 (314)
  • economy (314)
  • 均衡价格(325)
  • equilibrium price (325)
  • 生产要素(316)
  • factors of production (316)
  • 封建制度(318)
  • feudalism (318)
  • 重大经济问题(316)
  • great economic problem (316)
  • 看不见的手(318)
  • invisible hand (318)
  • 劳动力 (316)
  • labor (316)
  • 自由放任(332)
  • laissez-faire (332)
  • 市场经济(323)
  • market economy (323)
  • 重商主义制度 (318)
  • mercantilist system (318)
  • 自然资源(316)
  • natural resources (316)
  • 计划经济(321)
  • planned economies (321)
  • 务实的市场经济(335)
  • pragmatic market economy (335)
  • 社会主义(320)
  • socialism (320)
  • 苏联式社会主义(320)
  • Soviet-style socialism (320)
  • 供应 (325)
  • supply (325)
  • 供给曲线(325)
  • supply curve (325)
  • 非计划经济(321)
  • unplanned economies (321)
  • 财富(315)
  • wealth (315)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 经济学研究人们满足稀缺商品(包括服务)需求的社会组织。请列举一些经济需求的例子。
  2. Economics studies the social organization through which people satisfy their wants for scarce goods, including services. Give some examples of economic wants.
  3. 每个经济体必须履行哪四个重要职能?
  4. What four important functions must every economy perform?
  5. 什么是经济商品?什么是经济需求?什么是经济欲望?
  6. What are economic goods? What are economic needs? What are economic wants?
  7. 生产经济商品需要哪三个生产要素?
  8. What three factors of production are necessary to produce economic goods?
  9. 每个社会面临的最大经济问题是什么?
  10. What is the great economic problem facing every society?
  11. 作者所说的“另一个经济问题”是什么意思?
  12. What does the author mean by “the other economic problem”?
  13. 工业革命如何促进经济增长?
  14. How did the Industrial Revolution contribute to economic growth?
  15. 1776年,亚当·斯密出版了《国富论》。他认为一个国家如何才能富裕起来?
  16. In 1776, Adam Smith published the book The Wealth of Nations. How did he believe a nation could become wealthy?
  17. 在计划经济或社会主义经济中,谁负责建设工厂和分配货物?
  18. In a planned or socialist economy, who is responsible for building the factories and distributing the goods?
  19. 在非计划经济或市场经济中,谁来筹钱建厂?谁获得利润,谁承担损失?
  20. In an unplanned or market economy, who raises the money and builds the factories? Who gets the profits or suffers the losses?
  21. 如果政府控制生产资料、生产什么以及商品如何分配,那么好处是什么?坏处又是什么?
  22. If the government controls the means of production, what is produced and how the goods are distributed, what are the advantages? What are the disadvantages?
  23. 在计划经济体制下,如果天气和植物病害引发农业灾害,农场会停产吗?为什么会停产?
  24. In a planned economy, if weather and plant disease caused an agricultural disaster, would farms go out of production? Why or why not?
  25. 在计划社会主义经济条件下,造成消费品稀缺、质量低劣的原因有哪些?
  26. What are some of the reasons why consumer goods are scarce and of poor quality in a planned socialist economy?
  27. 如果可口可乐的价格上涨到每罐 5 美元,您预计可口可乐的需求量会发生什么变化?
  28. If the price of Coca-Cola went up to $5 a can, what would you expect to happen to the quantity of Coca-Cola demanded?
  29. 你认为每个人都有工作的权利吗?如果是,那么提供这么多工作岗位是谁的责任?
  30. Do you believe that everyone has a right to a job? If so, whose responsibility is it to provide that many jobs?
  31. 举例说明社会主义思想是如何在市场经济中得到运用的。
  32. Give an example of how a socialist idea has been adopted in a market economy.
  33. 举例说明资本主义思想是如何在社会主义经济中被采用的。
  34. Give an example of how a capitalist idea has been adopted in a socialist economy.
  35. 在美国和瑞典等市场经济体中,税收相当高。这如何模糊了资本主义社会主义之间的界限?
  36. In market economies, such as the United States and Sweden, taxes are quite high. How does this blur the distinction between the terms capitalist and socialist?
  37. 为什么计划经济和非计划经济之间的区别在今天变得不那么重要了?
  38. Why is the distinction between a planned and an unplanned economy less relevant today?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 访问www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/IR/039.html ,了解早期煤矿工人的经历。当时的工作条件与现在相比如何?这些工作条件是自由放任资本主义不可避免的结果吗?
  2. Read about the experiences of laborers in early coalmines at www.saburchill.com/history/chapters/IR/039.html. How do working conditions then compare to those now? Are these working conditions an unavoidable result of laissez-faire capitalism?
  3. 根据www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/index.html上的信息,黑市的定义是什么?
  4. Using information found at www.auburn.edu/~johnspm/gloss/index.html, what is the definition of a black market?
  5. 请访问www.spicker.uk/social-policy/wstate.htm了解福利国家。瑞典的经验值得借鉴吗?
  6. Go to www.spicker.uk/social-policy/wstate.htm and read about the welfare state. What lesson can be learned from Sweden’s experience?
  7. 请访问www.forbes.eom/sites/mthumoh/2020/10/26/black-women-were-among-the-fastest-growingentrepreneurs-then-covid-arrived/#427321f36e01。根据文章,为什么黑人企业受到 Covid-19 的影响尤为严重?
  8. Go to www.forbes.eom/sites/mthumoh/2020/10/26/black-women-were-among-the-fastest-growingentrepreneurs-then-covid-arrived/#427321f36e01. According to the article, why were black-owned businesses disproportionately affected by Covid-19?
  9. 请访问www.economist.com/special-report/2012/01/21/the-visible-hand。文章中提到的“看得见的手”是什么意思?它与务实的市场经济有何关系?
  10. Go to www.economist.com/special-report/2012/01/21/the-visible-hand. What does the article mean by the visible hand, and how does it relate to a pragmatic market economy?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • Bornstein, David,《如何改变世界:社会企业家和新思想的力量》,更新版,纽约:牛津大学出版社,2007 年。
  • Bornstein, David, How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, updated ed., New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  • 弗里德曼,米尔顿,《资本主义与自由》,伊利诺伊州芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社,1962 年。
  • Friedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1962.
  • 加尔布雷斯,约翰·肯尼斯,《经济学与公共目的》,马萨诸塞州波士顿:霍顿·米夫林,1973 年。
  • Galbraith, John Kenneth, Economics and the Public Purpose, Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1973.
  • 格拉德威尔,马尔科姆,《异类:成功的故事》,纽约:小布朗出版社,2008 年。
  • Gladwell, Malcolm, Outliers: The Story of Success, New York: Little Brown, 2008.
  • Haskel, Jonathan 和 Stian Westlake,《没有资本的资本主义》,新泽西州普林斯顿:普林斯顿大学出版社,2018 年。
  • Haskel, Jonathan and Stian Westlake, Capitalism without Capital, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018.
  • 哈耶克,弗里德里希,《通往奴役之路》,伊利诺斯州芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社,1944 年。
  • Hayek, Friedrich, The Road to Serfdom, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1944.
  • 杰普森,尼古拉斯。《中国崛起:大宗商品繁荣如何改变全球南方的发展战略》。纽约:哥伦比亚大学出版社,2020年。
  • Jepson, Nicholas. In Chinas Wake: How the Commodity Boom Transformed Development Strategies in the Global South. New York: Columbia University Press, 2020.
  • 克莱因,娜奥米,《这改变了一切:资本主义与气候》,纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2014 年。
  • Klein, Naomi, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014.
  • 普雷斯托维茨,克莱德,《三十亿新资本家:财富和权力向东方的大转移》,纽约:基础图书出版社,2006 年。
  • Prestowitz, Clyde, Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East, New York: Basic Books, 2006.
  • 里卡兹,詹姆斯。《新大萧条:后疫情时代的赢家和输家》,纽约:Portfolio出版社,2021年。
  • Rickards, James. The New Great Depression: Winners and Losers in a Post-Pandemic World, New York: Portfolio, 2021.
  • 桑德伯格,谢丽尔,《向前一步:女性、工作与领导意志》,纽约:阿尔弗雷德·克诺夫出版社,2013 年。
  • Sandberg, Sheryl, Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, New York: Alfred Knopf, 2013.
  • 熊彼特,约瑟夫·A.,《资本主义、社会主义与民主》,纽约:Harper & Row,1962 年。
  • Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, New York: Harper & Row, 1962.
  • 斯托克曼,大卫·A.,《大变形:美国资本主义的腐败》,纽约:公共事务出版社,2015 年。
  • Stockman, David A., The Great Deformation: Tim Corruption of Capitalism in America, New York: Public Affairs, 2015.
  • 纳西姆·尼古拉斯·塔勒布,《游戏中的皮肤:日常生活中隐藏的不对称》纽约:兰登书屋,2018 年。
  • Taleb, Nassim Nicholas, Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life, New York: Random House, 2018.
  • 彼得·蒂尔,《从零到一》,纽约:皇冠出版社,2014 年。
  • Thiel, Peter, Zero to One, New York: Crown Publishers, 2014.
  • 沃尔特,大卫·莫伯格,《沃尔玛效应:全球最强大的公司如何运作——以及它如何改变美国经济》,纽约:企鹅出版社,2006 年。
  • Walter, David Moberg, The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Worksand How It’s Transforming the American Economy, New York: Penguin, 2006.
  • 韦伯,马克斯,《新教伦理与资本主义精神》(1904 年),纽约:斯克里布纳出版公司,1958 年。
  • Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904), New York: Scribner, 1958.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第十八 美国面临的经济、政府和经济挑战

chapter 18 The Economy, Government, and Economic Challenges Facing the United States

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-18

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-18

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 区分政府在经济中的间接和直接作用
  • Distinguish government’s indirect and direct roles in the economy
  • 总结监管的成本和收益,并解释为什么监管应该被视为一个持续的过程
  • Summarize the costs and benefits of regulation, and explain why regulation should be seen as a continuous process
  • 讨论政府的两个有争议的角色
  • Discuss two contentious roles of government
  • 举例说明政府影响收入分配的两种方式
  • Give examples of two ways the government influences the distribution of income
  • 定义货币政策和财政政策
  • Define monetary policy and fiscal policy
  • 简要总结经济学家对财政危机、全球化和全球变暖的看法
  • Give a short summary of economists’ view of the fiscal crisis, globalization, and global warming
  • 定义全球化,并解释一价定律的重要性
  • Define globalization, and explain the importance of the law of one price

正如我们在上一章所讨论的,我们的经济体系最好被认为是务实的市场经济。这意味着我们不断寻求政府与市场控制的正确组合,以满足社会的需求。在本章中,我们将探讨这种组合以及未来几十年美国经济面临的挑战。

As we discussed in the last chapter, our economic system is best thought of as a pragmatic market economy. That means we are continually searching for the right mix of government and market control to meet society’s desires. In this chapter, we explore that mix and the challenges facing the US economy in the coming decades.

在讨论政府在经济中的作用时,有必要区分政府的间接作用(即通过法律法规规定个人和企业可以做什么、不可以做什么)和直接作用(即作为支出和征税机构在经济中的作用)。让我们先从政府的间接作用说起。

In talking about the government’s role in the economy, it is useful to distinguish government’s indirect role—its role in specifying what individuals and businesses can and cannot do through laws and regulation—from its direct role—its role in the economy as an institution that spends and taxes. Let’s begin with government’s indirect role.

政府在经济中的间接作用

Government's Indirect Role in the Economy

政府在经济中的间接作用是通过制定和执行规范个人和企业行为的法律,为市场运作提供法律和制度环境。这些法律对谁能得到什么、人们如何消费以及人们如何开展经济活动有着重大影响。

The government’s indirect role in the economy is to provide a legal and institutional setting for the workings of the market by establishing and enforcing laws that regulate actions of individuals and businesses. Such laws have significant influence on who gets what, how people spend their money, and how people conduct economic activities.

让我们首先考虑政府对谁能获得什么的影响。假设政府通过了一项法律,允许人们自由分享可下载的歌曲和电影,或者允许政府提供一个网站,允许其他人分享歌曲和电影。这样的法律会将收入从歌曲和电影的制作者转移到歌曲和电影的消费者身上。

Lets first consider governments influence on who gets what. Say the government passes a law that people can freely share downloadable songs and movies, or even that they can provide a site that allows other people to share songs and movies. Such a law will transfer income away from the producers of songs and movies to consumers of songs and movies.

或者,如果政府制定法律,禁止无证执业或教学——即使其他人愿意雇用他们,即使他们没有执照——这项法律将把收入转移给有执照的律师和教师,而不是消费者。政府利用此类法律法规间接决定收入分配的方式有很多,几乎可以无限延伸。换句话说,一个人的收入不仅反映了他或她的努力,也反映了政府制定的收入规则。

Alternatively, if the government establishes laws that prevent someone from practicing law or from teaching without a license—even if other people want to hire them despite their lack of a license—that law will transfer income to licensed lawyers and teachers and away from consumers. The list of ways in which the government indirectly determines the distribution of income with such laws and regulations is long and can be extended almost infinitely In other words, what someone earns reflects not only his or her efforts but also the rules the government establishes that govern how the income is earned.

监管的大幅增加。© Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

The enormous increase in regulations. © Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

政府对我们开展经济活动方式的影响同样无处不在。例如,如果你想开车,大多数州都要求你购买汽车保险。你必须达到一定年龄才能开始工作,而当你工作时,你必须保存某些记录并提交纳税申报表。公司在招聘时必须遵守某些非歧视性做法,提供保险证明,并确保其产品符合某些标准。正是由于政府发挥了巨大的间接作用,我们才称我们的经济体系为务实的市场经济,而不是有时所说的自由市场经济。自由市场经济将是无政府状态。美国经济远非无政府状态;它是一个高度管制的市场经济,其监管反映了务实的考虑,并试图纠正市场和政府造成的问题。两者都存在问题,所有社会都在不断寻找正确的结合点。

The governments influence on how we conduct economic activities is just as pervasive. For example, if you want to drive a car, most states require you to have car insurance. You must wait until you are a certain age to begin to work, and when you do work, you must keep certain records and file tax returns. Firms must abide by certain nondiscriminatory practices when hiring, provide proof of insurance, and ensure their products meet certain standards. It is because of government’s large indirect role that we called our economic system a pragmatic market economy rather than a free market economy as it is sometimes called. A free market economy would be anarchy. The US economy is far from anarchy; it is a highly regulated market economy where the regulations reflect pragmatic considerations and attempts to correct problems caused by markets and problems caused by government. Both are problematic, and all societies continually search for the right combination.

经济监管问题

The Problem of Regulating the Economy

所有人都同意需要某种监管。问题是:需要多少?什么类型的?一种受到特别攻击的监管类型是无资金支持的强制规定,即联邦政府的规定给个人和州带来巨额成本,但不提供支付这些成本的资金。无资金支持的强制规定的一个例子是联邦政府通过的法律,该法律规定美国的所有公共建筑都对所有人开放,包括身心障碍者。通过这项法律很容易,对许多美国人来说似乎是正确的。但是,这项法律给许多企业带来了沉重的成本,而法律并没有为这些企业提供支付成本的途径。政府每年都会通过许多此类法律和法规,给经济中的个人和企业带来巨额成本——这些成本必须由企业或其客户来支付。

All individuals agree that some regulation is needed. The questions are: How much? And what type? One type of regulation that has come under specific attack is unfunded mandates, or regulations by the federal government that impose significant costs on individuals and states but do not provide the funds to pay those costs. One example of an unfunded mandate is the law passed by the federal government to make all public buildings in the United States accessible to all individuals, including people with physical and mental disabilities. Passing the law was easy and seemed right to many Americans. But the law imposed serious costs on many businesses, and the law did not provide those businesses with a way to pay for them. Governments pass many such laws and regulations every year that impose large costs on individuals and firms in the economy—costs that someone, either the firm or their customers, must pay.

关于监管的争论一直持续着。特定监管的支持者通常认为,监管的重要目的是保护个人,并确保经济活动以法律体系认为公平的方式进行。特定监管的反对者通常认为监管成本过高,并引用了以下《华尔街日报》中的例子。纽约州北部的一家养老院曾被州政府官员誉为此类机构应有的“光辉典范”。然而,不久之后,这家养老院的主人却以如下理由关闭了它:

The debate over regulation is ongoing. Supporters of a particular regulation generally argue that the regulation serves an important purpose of protecting individuals and of ensuring that economic activities are carried out in a way that the legal system considers fair. Opponents of a particular regulation generally argue that the costs of the regulation are too high, citing examples such as the following, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal. An upstate New York nursing home had been cited by state officials as “a shining example” of what such an establishment ought to be. However, not long afterward, the owner of this home closed it down with the following explanation:

据老板说,她有时一天要花18个小时来处理仅仅20名病人和14名员工所需的政府文件。如此大规模的监管引发了一些支持“自由放任主义”人士的不满,他们认为政府应该尽可能少地干预商业活动。

According to the owner, she sometimes spent eighteen hours a day just handling the government paperwork required for only twenty patients and fourteen employees. Such large-scale regulations have brought about a reaction on the part of some people supporting the doctrine of laissez-faire, the theory that government should interfere with business as little as possible.

自由放任主义的坚定支持者面临的问题是,虽然存在许多大规模侵入性监管的例子,但也存在许多监管对社会有益的例子,而大多数观察家认为社会中有些部分监管不足——在这些经济领域,缺乏监管已经给经济带来了严重的问题。让我们来考虑其中几个。第一个涉及污染。过去,企业和个人可以不受任何限制地污染环境。这种污染常常导致溪流无法使用,空气无法呼吸,并破坏了美丽的地区和公共土地。用经济学家的话来说,这类问题是由外部性引起的——企业的行为或决策会对其他人产生负面影响,但企业在采取行动时并未考虑到这一点。当存在外部性时,导致外部性的行为会使大多数人的处境变得更糟。经济学家一致认为,即使在以市场为基础的经济中,也需要监管,以确保那些制造负面外部性的人停止这样做,至少要达到其他人愿意付钱让他们不从事这些活动的程度。

The problem for strong advocates of laissez-faire is that while there are many examples of large-scale and intrusive regulation, there are also many examples of regulations that have helped society, and there are parts of society that most observers would consider underregulated—areas of the economy where the lack of regulation has caused significant problems for the economy Let’s consider a couple of them. The first involves pollution. In the past, firms and people have been able to pollute without facing any limitations on their actions. That pollution has often made streams unusable, the air unbreathable, and has destroyed beautiful areas and public lands. In economists’ parlance, such problems are caused by externalities—the effects of a firm’s actions or decisions that negatively affect others but that the firm does not consider when undertaking the action. When there are externalities, the situation is made worse for the majority of people by the action that caused the externality. Economists agree that even in a primarily market-based economy, regulation is needed to see that those creating negative externalities stop doing so at least to the degree that others would be willing to pay them not to undertake those activities.

另一个因缺乏监管而引发问题的例子是,金融公司借入巨额资金购买高度投机性的抵押贷款支持证券(由高风险抵押贷款支持的债券)。2007 年,这些债券的价值下跌,这些公司无力偿还贷款,如果没有政府干预,它们就会倒闭。许多人认为这些金融机构活该倒闭。不幸的是,它们的倒闭会拖垮整个美国经济,甚至全世界的经济,这会让所有人的处境都变得更糟。它们被认为“大而不倒”,这意味着美国政府认为有必要介入并救助这些公司,于是在 2009 年就这么做了。这里的问题是,如果一家公司“大而不倒”,那么它就大到不能不受监管;救助之后,美国政府探索了加强对金融公司监管的方法,以避免未来再次发生金融危机。为此,它通过了一项名为《多德-弗兰克法案》的法律;然而,这些规则长达约 900 页,对于非法律专业人士来说几乎不可能理解。

Another example of an area where lack of regulation has caused problems involves financial firms that borrowed enormous amounts of money to buy highly speculative mortgage-backed securities (bonds backed by risky mortgages). When the value of those bonds fell in 2007, the firms could not pay back the loans, and they would have collapsed without government intervention. Many felt that these financial institutions deserved to collapse. Unfortunately, their collapse would have brought down the entire US, and probably world, economy along with it, which would have made the situation worse for everyone. They were considered “too big to fail,” which means that the US government felt it necessary to step in and bail out the firms, and it did so in 2009. The problem here is the fact that if a firm is too big to fail, it is too big not to be regulated; and following the bailout, the US government explored ways to increase the regulation of financial firms in an attempt to avoid another financial crisis in the future. It passed a law, called the Dodd-Frank Act, for this purpose; however, the rules were about 900 pages long and were nearly impossible for anyone not specializing in the law to understand.

关于需要多少监管以及何种监管类型,人们的意见分歧很大。显然,许多政府监管已经服务于公众利益,但同样明显的是,一些原本打算这样做的监管却并未如愿。找到合适的监管组合之所以如此困难,是因为监管问题不可能一劳永逸地解决然后就被遗忘。技术和社会形势在不断变化,这意味着过去适用的监管可能不再适用。人们还会想方设法规避监管,使得监管随着时间的推移变得不那么有效。因此,监管必须被视为一个持续的过程,这要求监管者始终领先于受监管的公司和个人。成功地做到这一点需要大量的专业知识和投入——而这些专业知识成本高昂,通常超出了政府的预算。

There are huge differences of opinion about how much and what kind of regulation is desirable. It is clear that many government regulations have served the public interest, but it seems equally clear that some intended to do so have not. What makes finding the right mix of regulation so difficult is that the problem of regulation cannot be solved once and for all and then forgotten. Technology and social situations are continually changing, which means that regulations appropriate in the past may no longer be appropriate. People also figure out ways to get around regulations, so that the regulations become less effective over time. Thus, regulation must be seen as a continual process, which requires regulators to stay ahead of the firms and the individuals regulated. Successfully doing so requires enormous expertise and commitment—expertise that is expensive and often beyond the budget of governments.

政府体现谁的愿望?

Whose Desires Does the Government Reflect?

如果政府总是反映“社会意志”,那么关于监管和政府角色的争论就会少得多。但事实并非如此。“社会意志”是人为构建的;没有任何社会拥有能够独立于社会个体集体意志之外而具体化的社会意志。政府将反映谁的愿望,因为社会的愿望受制于巨大的政治内斗;它反映了不同群体的政治权力:拥有政治权力的人的愿望得以实现,而没有政治权力的人则无法实现。

If government always reflected “society’s will,” there would be far less debate about regulation and governments role. But it doesn’t. “Society’s will” is an artificial construct; there is no society that has a will of its own that can be specified separately from the collective will of the individuals within the society. Whose desires will be reflected by government as society’s desires is subject to enormous political infighting; it reflects the political power of various groups: Those with political power get their desires met, while those without political power do not.

在许多外部观察者看来,政府法律法规往往并非旨在帮助普通公众,而是旨在帮助特殊利益群体。以专利和版权问题为例。大家都认为,某种程度的专利和版权保护是有用的,因为它可以激励新技术和新产品的开发,但许多人认为,专利和版权的期限远远超过了鼓励此类开发所需的时间,而且专利和版权的期限在美国的期限可以大大缩短,从而让公众受益,同时对激励措施的负面影响最小。

Often, from many outside observers’ perspectives, government laws and regulations are not designed to help the general public, but instead are designed to help special interests. Consider the issues of patents and copyrights. All agree that some patent and copyright protection is useful because it creates incentives for the development of new technologies and products, but many argue that the length of time that patents and copyrights last is far longer than necessary to encourage such developments and that the length of patents and copyrights in the United States could be shortened significantly, thereby benefiting the general public with minimal negative effects on incentives.

© Wiley Miller 和www.cartoonstock.com

© Wiley Miller and www.cartoonstock.com

为什么政府不缩短这些期限?批评人士声称,原因是这会减少专利和版权所有者的收入——而这些所有者极力游说国会,试图阻止这种情况发生。1998 年的《版权期限延长法案》就是一个例子,该法案通常被称为“米老鼠保护法案”,因为迪士尼公司是该法案的最大受益者。迪士尼对米老鼠的版权在 75 年后即将到期。这将允许任何人生产米老鼠商品而无需向迪士尼支付费用。迪士尼极力游说国会,国会最终将版权期限延长了数十年,实际上是将数十亿美元的利润从消费者手中转移到了迪士尼手中。类似的例子还有很多。

Why don’t governments shorten these times? Critics claim that the reason is that it would reduce the patent and copyright owners’ income—and those owners lobby Congress hard to prevent that from happening. An example of this is the Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, often called the “Mickey Mouse Protection Act” because the Disney Corporation was a big beneficiary of the law. Disney’s copyright on Mickey Mouse was about to expire after seventy-five years. That would have let anyone produce Mickey Mouse goods without paying Disney. Disney lobbied Congress hard, and Congress extended the copyright for decades longer, essentially transferring billions of dollars from consumers to Disney. Many similar examples exist.

因此,尽管大多数人都同意,从原则上讲,监管可以改善经济的运作,但对于在现实世界中,监管是否确实改善了经济的运作,或者监管是否仅仅为特殊利益集团提供了改善其地位的另一种方法,人们的共识却少得多。

So while most people agree that, in principle, regulations can improve the workings of an economy, there is far less agreement on whether, in the real world, regulations do improve the workings of the economy or whether regulation simply provides an alternative method through which special interests can improve their position.

对监管的态度摇摆不定

Fluctuating Attitudes Toward Regulation

美国国内对监管的态度起伏不定。在20世纪60年代和70年代初,监管被视为对私人权力的必要限制。大约在20世纪70年代中期以及80年代后期,公众舆论发生了转变,许多人认为美国经济正遭受过度监管的困扰。这导致人们相信,放松监管,或者说取消那些过度监管,将改善经济运行。随后,在21世纪初,由于大型银行和保险公司的金融风险承担,先是会计丑闻,然后是2008-2009年的金融危机,经济再次受到重创,并濒临崩溃。作为回应,公众舆论转向支持更多或至少是更好的监管。

Attitudes in the United States toward regulation have fluctuated. In the 1960s and early 1970s, regulation was seen as a necessary limit to private powers. About the mid-1970s and well into the 1980s, the pendulum of public opinion shifted, and many believed that the US economy was suffering from overregulation. This led to a belief that deregulation, or the removal of those excessive regulations, would improve the workings of the economy. Then, in the 2000s, the pendulum swung again as first accounting scandals, and then the financial crisis of 20082009, rocked the economy and brought it to the verge of collapse because of financial risk-taking by large banks and insurance companies. In response, public opinion shifted to favor more, or at least better, regulation.

近年来,随着总统大位从唐纳德·特朗普转向乔·拜登,监管与放松管制之间出现了剧烈的钟摆式波动。总统特朗普秉持着传统的共和党价值观,认为监管阻碍了经济和商业的增长。但拜登总统则倾向于民主党的价值观,即需要加强监管,以确保不让任何美国人掉队,并纠正社会经济不平等。

In recent years, there have been dramatic pendulum swings between regulation and deregulation as the presidency has changed hands from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. President Trump aligned with traditional Republican values, believing that regulation hindered the growth of the economy and business. But President Biden veered toward Democratic values, that is, more regulation is necessary to ensure that no American is left behind, and to redress socioeconomic inequality.

政府在经济中的直接作用

Government's Direct Role in the Economy

除了制定经济法律法规等间接作用外,政府还在经济中发挥直接作用。我们指的是,政府是经济的积极参与者,每年征收和支出数万亿美元。政府之所以在经济中发挥直接作用,是因为有些事情集体行动比个人行动更好,而政府是我们社会中开展集体行动的天然机构。让我们考虑一个最好由集体行动完成的例子:国防。如果我们每个人都自行防御来自其他国家的攻击,我们的国家很可能会被另一个国家接管——我们国家中的每个人甚至无力提供一架飞机或一艘战舰。这些集体消费品,有时也称为公共物品,由政府提供比由个人提供更有效率。

Besides its indirect role of making laws and regulations for the economy, government also plays a direct role in the economy. By that we mean that it is an active participant in the economy and that it collects and spends trillions of dollars a year. The reason government has a direct role in the economy is because some things are better done collectively than individually, and government is the natural institution in our society to carry out collective action. Let’s consider one example of something best done collectively: defense. If each of us provided for our own defense for attack from another country, our country would likely be taken over by another country—each individual in our country could not afford to provide even one plane or one battleship. These collective consumption goods, sometimes called public goods, are more efficiently supplied by government than by individuals.

政府的钱花在哪里

Where the Government Spends Its Money

直到最近,联邦政府每年都花费约4万亿美元来资助其活动,州和地方政府则花费超过3.4万亿美元来资助其活动。图18.1a显示了联邦政府支出的正常划分;图18.1b显示了州政府支出的正常划分。从2021年开始,正常预算已被新冠疫情支出所取代——这些支出旨在抵消和弥补政府为阻止新冠疫情蔓延而关闭活动造成的损失。因此,2020年,联邦政府支出创纪录地达到了6.5万亿美元。尽管政府收入远低于这一数字,但2021年联邦政府的支出很可能与2020年持平。

Each year, until recently the federal government has spent about $4 trillion to finance its activities, and state and local governments have spent more than $3.4 trillion to finance their activities. Figure 18.1a shows the normal division of federal government expenditures; and Figure 18.1b shows the normal division of state government expenditures. Starting in 2021, normal budgeting has been superseded by Covid spending—spending designed to offset and make up for the government shutdowns of activities to present the spread of Covid. Thus, in 2020, the federal government spent a record-breaking $6.5 trillion. It is is likely to spend equal amounts in 2021 even though government revenues are far below that.

图 18.1(a)2020 年按用途划分的联邦支出概算(b)2020 年按用途划分的各州支出概算。(来源:美国商务部、国会预算办公室、美国财政部)

Figure 18.1(a) Approximate federal outlays by use, 2020 (b) Approximate state outlays by use, 2020. (Source: US Department of Commerce, CBO, US Department of Treasury)

可以看出,联邦政府在社会福利项目上的支出占比最大。相比之下,州政府在行政管理结束后,大部分资金用于教育和公共福利。除了联邦和州政府的活动外,还有还有地方政府的活动。地方政府的大部分预算用于教育和道路建设。

As you can see, the federal government spends the largest percentage on social welfare programs. By contrast, after administration, state governments spend most of their money on education and public welfare. In addition to federal and state governmental activities, there are also local governmental activities. Local governments spend most of their budgets on education and roads.

政府资金来源

Where Government Gets Its Money

如果政府要提供某种商品,就必须为此付费。付费的四种主要方式是自愿捐款、税收、借贷和印钞。其中最突出的是税收。有政府就意味着有税收。为什么不通过自愿捐款来支付这些商品的费用呢?原因是,即使人们正在从公共物品中受益,他们也倾向于避免为公共物品做出贡献。因此,所有政府都有权征税——强迫人们为政府提供的商品付费。政府也使用借贷,但借贷并不能消除政府支付商品或税收的需要;它只是将支付推迟到以后。此外,借贷意味着政府不仅要偿还贷款,还要支付贷款利息。政府支付商品费用的最后一种方法是印钞。政府最近就是用这种方法来为疫情支出融资。印钞有点像发行债券——但“货币”是一种永远不会到期且没有相关利率的债券。

If government is to supply a good, it has to pay for it. The four main options for paying are voluntary contributions, taxes, borrowing and printing money. Tire most prominent of these is taxes. To have a government is to have taxes. Why not pay for those goods through voluntary contributions? Tire reason is that people have a natural tendency to avoid contributing toward public goods, even when they are receiving the benefits. Therefore, all governments have the power to tax—to force people to pay for the goods that government supplies. Borrowing is also used by government, but borrowing does not eliminate the need for government to pay for the goods or for taxes; it simply puts it off until later. Moreover, borrowing means that the government not only has to pay the money back; it also has to pay interest on the loan. The last method the government has to pay for goods is to print money. It is this method that the government has used recently to finance pandemic spending. Printing money is a bit like issuing bonds—but “money” is a bond that never comes due and has no interest rate associated with it.

每年,美国联邦、州和地方政府共征收约5万亿美元的税款。图18.2a和18.2b显示了联邦和州政府税收收入的划分。如图所示,联邦政府的主要收入来源是个人所得税、社会保障税和企业所得税。州和地方政府的主要收入来源包括三种:所得税、财产税和销售税。地方政府的大部分收入来自财产税。

Each year, the US federal, state, and local governments together collect about $5 trillion in taxes. Figures 18.2a and 18.2b show the divisions of tax revenues for the federal and state governments. As you can see, the federal government’s primary sources of revenue are individual income taxes, Social Security taxes, and corporate income taxes. State and local governments’ primary sources of revenue are a combination of three sources—income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes. Local governments get most of their income from property taxes.

图18.2中的两张图表忽略了一个事实:无论联邦还是州一级,政府支出通常都大大超过税收收入。在这种情况下,支出必须通过借款而非税收来融资。目前,美国国债超过23万亿美元,相当于每位纳税人约18.3万美元。由于政府为抗击新冠疫情投入巨额资金,预计未来几年国债将大幅增加。这些债务大部分是“公共债务”,这意味着它们以美国国债的形式由外部投资者持有,包括公司和外国政府。美国公共债务最大的两个外国持有者是日本和中国政府。

What the two charts in Figure 18.2 miss is the fact that on both the federal and state levels, government spending often significantly exceeds tax revenue. When that happens, the spending has to be financed by borrowing, not taxes. Currently, the US national debt is more than $23 trillion, or approximately $183,000 per taxpayer, and with the large government expenditures to fight Covid, it is projected to increase significantly in the coming years. Most of this debt is “public debt,” meaning that it is held in the form of Treasury securities by outside investors, including companies and foreign governments. The two largest foreign holders of US public debt are the governments of Japan and China.

务实市场经济中的替代供应方法

Alternative Methods of Supply in a Pragmatic Market Economy

一旦政府存在,政治进程就可以决定哪些商品应该由政府提供,哪些商品应该通过市场由私人供应,以及政府应该扮演哪些其他角色。有很多不同的安排是可能的。以小学和中学教育为例。它可以由私人提供,个人支付他们想要的教育费用,就像人们支付汽车费用一样。但大多数社会提供教育的方式并非如此。大多数社会用税收为所有学生提供教育。为什么?因为他们认为教育不仅惠及受教育的个人,也惠及整个社会。在美国,由税收支付的公立教育到高中毕业时结束,尽管大多数州的学院和大学的部分预算来自税收。

Once a government exists, the political process can decide which goods the government should provide, which goods should be supplied privately through the market, and what other roles the government should have. Many different arrangements are possible. Consider primary and secondary education. It could be supplied privately with individuals paying for the education they want, in the same way that people pay for their cars. But this is not the way most societies provide education. Most societies provide education for all students by paying for it with money collected in taxes. Why? Because they feel education benefits the society as a whole as well as the individuals getting the education. In the United States, tax-paid public education ends with the completion of high school, although most states have colleges and universities that receive part of their budgets from tax money.

目前,关于公立学校是否充分履行了提供优质教育的职责,以及其成本(每名学生每年超过1.3万美元)是否过高,存在争议。一些改革者主张建立一种混合型教育体系——公共资金投入,私人提供——通过向家长发放代金券,允许家长选择送孩子就读的学校,并用政府代金券支付至少部分学费。

Currently, there is a debate about whether public schools are doing an adequate job of providing a quality education and whether their costs—more than $13,000 per student per year—are excessive. Some reformers advocate a hybrid system—public funding but private provision—through vouchers given to parents, allowing families to choose which school to send their children to and to pay for at least part of the school cost with the government vouchers.

教育并非唯一可以由政府、个人或私营企业支付和供应的商品。例如,医疗保健和处方药本来可以由私人支付和供应,但实际上部分由政府支付,尽管在美国,供应仍由私人承担。

Education is not the only good that can be paid for and supplied either by government, individuals, or private firms. For instance, health care and prescription drugs are goods that could be paid for and supplied privately but are actually paid for in part by the government, although in the United States, supply remains private.

2010年,美国通过了一项强制性医疗保险法,即《患者保护与平价医疗法案》(ACA),该法案要求所有个人必须购买医疗保险,并为低收入人群提供保险补贴。这些强制规定遭到26个州的质疑,被认为违宪,但最高法院在2012年裁定ACA符合宪法。ACA于2014年开始实施,但至今尚未正式生效。一直存在问题。围绕医疗保险以及如何以经济有效的方式提供医疗保险的争论,反映出支持政府发挥更大直接作用的两派与支持个人承担更大责任的两派之间存在的巨大分歧。

In 2010, the United States passed a mandatory health insurance law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the ACA), that required all individuals to have health insurance, and provided for subsidies for lower-income individuals to pay for that insurance. These mandates were challenged as being unconstitutional by twenty-six states, but in 2012, the Supreme Court declared the ACA constitutional. Implementation began in 2014, but that implementation has been problematic. The fight over health insurance, and how to provide it in a cost-effective manner, reflects the wide divide between those who favor a larger direct role for government and those who favor a larger role for individual responsibility.

图 18.2(a)2020 年按来源划分的联邦收入。 (b)2020 年按来源划分的州和地方税收收入大致情况。(来源:美国商务部、美国财政部、OMB、美国人口普查局)

Figure 18.2(a) Federal revenue by source, 2020. (b) Approximate State and local tax revenue by source, 2020. (Source: US Department of Commerce, US Department of Treasury, OMB, US Bureau of the Census)

唐纳德·特朗普总统任期内,致力于废除奥巴马时代的医疗改革。例如,他取消了所有人必须购买特定类型保险的规定。当乔·拜登总统接替他时,他开始恢复《平价医疗法案》(ACA)的效力。

During his presidency, Donald Trump worked to repeal the Obama-era health care reforms. For example, he eliminated the mandate that all people had to buy specific types of insurance. When President Joe Biden replaced him, he started restoring the ACA to its previous strength.

在务实的市场经济中,政府在经济中的直接作用始终是一个重要的争论话题。经济学为选择某些供给方式而非其他方式可能出现的问题提供了指导,但经济理论并未断言某种方式优于另一种。经济理论与一般的社会科学理论一样,能够洞悉采取某些政策的后果,但无法解答应该采取哪种政策的问题。这是社会必须做出的选择。

The direct role of government in the economy will always be an important issue of debate in a pragmatic market economy. Economics gives guidance about problems that will likely develop if certain methods of supply are chosen over other methods, but economic theory does not say that one approach is better than another. Economic theory, like social science theory generally, provides insights into the consequences of adopting certain policies, but not the answer to the question of which policy should be adopted. That is a choice society must make.

政府的一些有争议的角色

Some Controversial Roles of the Government

现在让我们来探讨政府在经济中扮演的一些角色,这些角色结合了政府的间接作用和直接作用。首先,我们将探讨政府的收入再分配;其次,我们将探讨政府的宏观经济作用。

Let’s now turn to some roles of government in the economy that combine the governments indirect and direct roles. First, we will look at income redistribution through government; and, second, we look at government’s macroeconomic role.

通过政府进行收入再分配

Income Redistribution Through Government

政府最具争议的作用或许涉及收入再分配。收入再分配是通过政府的直接和间接作用实现的。我们之前已经讨论过间接作用对分配的影响。通过允许长期专利和版权,政府将大量图书和音乐消费者的收入重新分配给拥有这些版权和专利的少数人,从而造成了不平等。第二个例子涉及最近提出的限额与交易政策的二氧化碳权利分配方案,政府试图通过减少二氧化碳排放来帮助应对全球变暖政府无视几乎所有经济学家的建议,提议将这些权利中的大部分授予现有的污染者,而不是将其拍卖。如果现有的污染者减少污染,他们就可以自由地“出售”这些权利。通过以这种方式分配权利,政府向这些公司和购买其产品的人转移了数千亿美元,而原本可以通过拍卖这些权利获得收入的政府却没有从中获利。

Perhaps government’s most controversial role involves the redistribution of income. Redistribution of income is achieved both through the government’s direct and indirect roles. We have spoken previously of the indirect role’s effect on distribution. By allowing long-term patents and copyrights, the government creates inequality by redistributing income from large numbers of consumers of books and music to a small group of people who own those copyrights and patents. A second example concerns the recent proposed allocation of CO2 rights for the cap-and-trade policy by which the government is attempting to help fight global warming by reducing CO2 emissions. Ignoring the advice of almost all economists, the government has proposed to give the majority of these rights to existing polluters rather than auctioning them off. The existing polluters will then be free to “sell” those rights if they cut their pollution. By allocating the rights in that manner, the government is creating a transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars to these companies and to the people who buy their outputs—and away from the government that would have received the income from auctioning off these rights.

所得税是政府收入的主要来源。© Shutterstock

The income tax is a major source of government's income. © Shutterstock

最后一个例子涉及律师、医生和房地产等职业的许可。这些许可证迫使这些服务的提供者在获准从事该职业之前必须接受通常价格不菲的培训。这样一来,政府就将某些活动限制在获得证书的人身上。这种限制大大提高了服务的价格,使其与准入限制较少时的水平相比大幅提升。请考虑几个例子——一个人(即使是医生)不得因给狗注射狂犬病疫苗而收费,即使他或她可能通过培训知道如何注射。同样,专门撰写遗嘱的人不得因为朋友撰写遗嘱而收费。这两种行为都属于无证执业,都是违法的。当然,拥有资格证书确实有好处,但培训通常并不能真正使人获得资格;它只是人们进入某个职业必须跨越的一道门槛。政府可以通过认证项目而不是许可项目来让人们了解哪些人拥有资格证书。然后,人们可以决定是否要聘请“认证”律师或非认证律师。通过这样的项目,人们进入职业的自由度将比现在大得多,同时仍然允许人们选择聘请认证专业人士。或者,政府可以提供范围更窄的再许可,允许非律师从事特定类型的活动,例如撰写简单的遗嘱,但不能从事其他类型的活动,例如在法庭上为客户辩护。

A final example involves the licensing of professions such as lawyers, medicine, and real estate. Those licenses force suppliers of these services to go through an often expensive schooling before they are allowed to practice that profession. In doing so, the government limits certain activities to those who have gotten the credential. That limitation raises the price of the service considerably from what it would be if entry had been less restrictive. Consider a couple of examples—a person (even a medical doctor) is not allowed to charge for administering a rabies shot to a dog, even though he or she might know how to do so from his or her training. Similarly, a person who has specialized in writing wills is not allowed to charge for writing a will for a friend. Doing either would be practicing a profession without a license, which is against the law. There are, of course, benefits of people having qualifications, but often the training doesn’t really make someone qualified; it simply serves as a hurdle that people must meet to enter a profession. Government could let people know who has qualifications with a certification program, rather than a licensing program. Then people could decide if they wanted to hire a “certified” lawyer or an uncertified lawyer. Through such a program, it would be possible to have much more freedom of entry into professions than there currently is, while still giving people the option of hiring a certified professional. Alternatively, government could provide narrower sublicenses in which a non-lawyer could be licensed to do particular types of activities, such as writing a simple will, but not other types of activities, such as defending a client in court.

政府还通过运用征税权和支出职能直接影响收入分配。通常,这包括对高收入人群征收相对较高的税,并利用这些税款为收入原本低得多的人群提供额外收入。在美国,政府通过三种方式来影响收入分配:

Government also directly influences the distribution of income through its use of its taxing power and its spending functions. Generally, this involves imposing relatively higher taxes on people who have high incomes and using that tax money to provide additional income to people whose income would otherwise be much lower. There are three ways this is done in the United States:

  1. 我们实行累进所得税制——高收入人群缴纳更高的税率,以便政府能够利用税收资金为低收入人群提供各项福利项目。虽然我们的所得税是累进的,但其累进性远不如过去。二战期间以及战后不久,高收入人群的最高联邦税率超过90%。如今,工资等劳动所得的最高联邦税率约为40%。
  2. We have a progressive income tax system—people who earn high incomes are taxed at a higher rate so that the government can use tax money to provide programs for lower-income people. Although our income tax is progressive, it is far less progressive than it has been in the past. During World War II and for a short while thereafter, the top federal tax rate on high-income individuals was over 90 percent. Today, top federal tax rates on earned income such as wages are about 40 percent.
  3. 我们有低收入税收抵免。低收入人群可以获得税收抵免,因此他们无需纳税,而是直接从政府获得补贴。
  4. We have low-income tax credits. Low-income people are given a tax credit, so instead of paying taxes, they receive a direct payment from the government.
  5. 我们有有利于穷人的福利项目。我们政府提供的收入支持主要通过福利项目提供,例如社会保障、医疗保险和医疗补助,这些项目旨在在一定程度上惠及穷人。例如,联邦政府为许多低收入人群提供医疗保险费补贴。
  6. We have entitlement programs that favor the poor. The majority of income support our government provides is through entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are designed to favor the poor somewhat. For example, the federal government subsidizes health insurance premiums for many low-income people.

这些项目每一个都很复杂,光是解释它们的复杂性,我们就能写一本书;但我们这里就不展开了。我们主要讨论其中一个例子,那就是社会保障项目,它是政府支出最大的项目。

Each of these programs is complicated, and we could write a book about each one just trying to explain their intricacies; we won’t do that here. We focus our discussion on one example, the Social Security program, the largest government expenditure program.

美国社会保障制度第一个全面的政府管理社会保险制度由德意志帝国于 1889 年颁布,由著名的德国总理奥托·冯·俾斯麦发起,他显然将其视为缓解社会动荡的计划。在接下来的三十年里,大多数其他主要工业国家也采用了类似的计划。直到 20 世纪 30 年代大萧条时期,美国才通过了 1935 年社会保障法,这是一项广泛的社会保险计划。在富兰克林·罗斯福总统的压力下,国会颁布了联邦保险缴款法(FICA),该计划通过一半向雇主征收、一半向雇员征收的税收,提供广泛的社会保险计划。该计划是希望获得更大政府收入支持保障的自由派和反对任何此类计划的保守派之间的妥协。

The US Social Security System The first comprehensive government-administered social insurance system was enacted by imperial Germany in 1889, sponsored by the famous German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who apparently conceived of it as a plan for allaying social unrest. Over the next three decades, similar plans were adopted by most other major industrial nations. It was not until the Great Depression of the 1930s that the United States passed the Social Security Act of 1935, a broad program of social insurance. Under pressure from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Congress enacted the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA), a plan providing a broad program of social insurance funded by a tax levied half on employers and half on employees. The plan was a compromise between liberals who wanted a much larger guarantee of government income support and conservatives who opposed any such plan.

社会保障不是保险由于围绕它的争论,社会保障被公众描述为一种缴费型保险计划,尽管它实际上并不符合这个定义。真正的保险计划会筹集资金,进行投资,并从中支付那些发现自己处于投保情况下的人的费用。随着社会保障制度的发展,它几乎是一收到钱就立即支付。因此,它的资金来源不像保险计划,而是一个只有少量储备的制度;福利来自当前缴款。这样的程序并不一定意味着该制度不健全。只要新的缴款至少等于支出,该制度就可以永远持续下去。然而,政府称其为保险计划,而实际上它完全是另一回事,这为未来的问题埋下了伏笔。

Social Security Is Not Insurance Because of the debate surrounding it, Social Security was described to the public as a type of contributory insurance plan, even though it really did not meet that definition. A true insurance plan would collect money, invest it, and out of the proceeds pay people who found themselves in the circumstances against which they were insuring themselves. As it developed, the Social Security system paid out the money almost as soon as it took it in. Thus, it was not funded like an insurance plan but was a system in which there was only a small reserve; benefits were paid from current contributions. Such a procedure does not necessarily mean the system is unsound. As long as new contributions at least equal expenditures, the system can continue forever. However, by calling it an insurance plan when it was actually something quite different, the government laid the foundation for future problems.

最初,问题并不明显:最初的计划规模不大,缴费金额很少,每月福利水平很低。在最初的几年里,它并非计划作为一个退休制度,而是为了缓解老年贫困,并作为工人为退休收入制定的其他计划的补充。在整个 20 世纪 80 年代,该法律经过多次修订,几乎每次都是为了增加个人福利金额,有时是为了增加符合条件的人数。随着该计划的法定支出增加,税收也大幅增加。从 20 世纪 80 年代开始,出于对该制度稳定性的担忧,一些项目被削减,例如略微降低当前福利金额,并提高未来的退休年龄。

Initially, the problems were not evident: The initial plan was a modest one, contributions were very small, and monthly benefit levels were very low. In those initial years, it was not planned as a retirement system but, rather, as a cushion against destitution in old age and as a supplement to whatever other plans workers made for retirement income. Through the 1980s, the law was amended many times, almost always to increase the amount of an individual’s benefit and sometimes to increase the number of people who could become eligible. As legislated expenditures of the program have increased, the tax has greatly increased as well. Beginning in the 1980s, fear about the stability of the system led to some cutbacks such as computing current benefits at slightly lower amounts and, for the future, setting the retirement age higher.

社会保障福利和税收人们要缴纳多少社会保障税?2022年,个人需就其工资(最高14.7万美元)缴纳6.2%的税款,并需就其总工资缴纳1.45%的额外税款(用于医疗福利)。雇佣他们的企业也缴纳了相同比例的税款,这笔税款是在个人所得税之外的,因此,他们总共缴纳了超过15%的社会保障税。

Social Security Benefits and Taxes How much do people pay for Social Security? In 2022, individuals paid a tax of 6.2 percent on their wages up to $147,000 and an additional tax, dedicated to health benefits, of 1.45 percent on their total wages. Businesses that hired them paid an equal amount, which is in addition to the income tax that individuals pay, so combined they pay over 15 percent in Social Security taxes.

罗斯福总统签署社会保障法案

President Roosevelt signing Social Security legislation.

人们的投入能得到多少回报?这取决于他们工作了多久,工作时的收入是多少,以及何时开始领取福利,以及其他各种因素。为了大致了解一个人能得到多少福利,假设一位工人退休时年薪为5万美元,并且一生中大部分时间都在稳定工作。如果他或她在62岁退休,每月将获得约1,750美元;但如果他或她推迟到70岁退休,每月将获得近2,900美元。

How much do people get back for what they put in? That depends on how long they worked, how much they earned when they worked, and when they started claiming benefits, along with a variety of other factors. To give you a rough idea of how much someone would get, say a worker earned $50,000 a year when he or she retired, and worked consistently most of his or her life. That worker would receive about $1,750 a month if he or she retired at sixty-two, but if he or she delayed retirement until seventy, would receive closer to $2,900 a month.

社会保障体系的未来由于社会保障是一种现收现付制,而不是保险制度,因此它的偿付能力取决于有多少人缴纳人数和领取人数。该计划刚开始时,缴纳人数很多,领取人数很少。1950 年,每领取 1 人福利,就有 16.5 人缴纳。最近,该比例已变为每领取 3 人缴纳,就有 1 人领取,这需要在更高的基数上施加更高的税率(1937 年,税率仅为 1%,仅适用于收入的前 3,000 美元)。但真正的危机将出现在 2020 年至 2030 年之间,届时婴儿潮一代的绝大多数将退休。届时,缴纳人数和领取人数的比例将接近二比一。当这种情况发生时,社会保障体系将不得不借钱,税率将不得不大幅提高,或者福利将不得不削减。

The Future of the Social Security System Because Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, not an insurance system, how solvent it is depends on how many people are paying into it and how many are drawing out of it. When the program began, many paid in and few took out. In 1950, for every one person drawing benefits, 16.5 people were paying in. Recently, that ratio has changed to about one person drawing out for every three people paying in, necessitating a much higher tax rate applied to a much higher base (in 1937, the tax was just 1 percent and applied only to the first $3,000 of income). But the real crunch will come between 2020 and 2030, when a large majority of the baby boomers retire. At that time, the ratio of people paying in to people drawing out will move closer to two to one. When that happens, the Social Security system will have to borrow money, the tax rate will have to rise considerably, or benefits will have to be cut.

社会保障信托基金(Social Security Trust Fund)是通过提高联邦保险捐款法(FICA)税额,使其超过现有福利所需的资金水平而建立起来的,它在一定程度上缓解了未来缴费人数与领取人数之间不平衡的局面。但美国无法回避这样一个事实:在不久的将来,社会保障体系将支持比现在更多的退休人员,而平均每个退休人员的缴费人数却会减少。

The Social Security Trust Fund, which has been built up by raising the FICA tax above what is necessary to fund the current benefits, provides some cushion against the future imbalance between the number of people paying in compared to the number of people drawing out. But the United States cannot escape the fact that in the near future, the Social Security system will be supporting many more retirees than it does now, and have fewer contributors per retiree.

政府的宏观经济作用

Government's Macroeconomic Role

政府参与经济的另一种重要但颇具争议的形式体现了其宏观经济作用——通过减少经济波动和提供稳定的金融环境来保护和增加社会福利。为了理解政府的宏观经济作用,有必要将其与政府的微观经济作用进行对比——微观经济作用是在考虑个人福利的基础上保护和增加社会福利。这两种作用都考虑社会,但微观经济学从个人开始构建系统效应,而宏观经济学则从整个系统开始,然后再逐步延伸到个人。宏观经济学之所以被称为宏观经济学,是因为它关注的是总体(宏观)社会,而微观经济学则关注的是个人。这两种经济学都考虑社会福利,但方法不同。这意味着两者之间的差异更多的是方法而非关注点。

Another important, but controversial, form of government involvement in the economy reflects its macroeconomic role—its role in protecting and increasing society’s welfare by reducing economic fluctuations in the economy and providing a stable financial environment. To understand government’s macroeconomic role, it is useful to contrast it with government’s microeconomic role—a role that involves protecting and increasing society’s welfare based on the consideration of individuals’ welfare. Both roles consider society, but microeconomics builds up from the individual to create systemic effects, while macroeconomics starts with the whole system and then works down to the individual. The reason it is called macroeconomics is that it focuses its concerns on the aggregate (macro) society—whereas microeconomics focuses its concerns on the individual. Both categories consider the welfare of society, but they approach it differently. What this means is that the difference between the two is more one of approach than of focus.

因此,对经济学家而言,政府的微观经济角色关注的是诸如医疗保健或养老金等具体问题。政府的宏观经济角色则关注的是整体经济——确保整体经济保持稳定,避免陷入萧条或出现失控的通货膨胀。

Thus, for economists, government’s microeconomic role is concerned with individual problems such as health care or old-age pensions. Government’s macroeconomic role is concerned with the economy as a whole—seeing to it that the overall economy remains stable, does not fall into a depression, or experience runaway inflation.

稳定经济

Stabilizing the Economy

过去一百年,失业率、通货膨胀率和产出都经历了显著的波动。这些总产出的波动被称为商业周期。典型的商业周期如图18.3所示,它包含一个繁荣期和一个衰退期。

Over the past hundred years, there has been significant fluctuation in unemployment, inflation, and output. These fluctuations in aggregate output are called business cycles. A typical business cycle is shown in Figure 18.3; it has a boom period and a recession period.

图 18.3理想化的商业周期

Figure 18.3Idealized business cycle.

直到20世纪30年代,大多数经济学家都认为这种商业周期是不可避免的。社会应该忍受它们,就像人们忍受身体上的轻微疼痛一样。因此,人们认为政府在稳定经济方面几乎没有发挥宏观经济作用。波动失业被视为生活中不可避免的一部分。经济学家认为,政府应该关注如何防止通货膨胀,并设法控制其支出倾向,而无需通过征税来支付这些支出。为此,当时大多数经济学家支持政府实行平衡预算(战时除外),并限制货币供应量的增加。

Up until the 1930s, most economists thought such business cycles were inevitable. Society should put up with them just as one endures minor aches and pains in one’s body So there was felt to be little macroeconomic role for government in stabilizing the economy Fluctuations and unemployment were seen as inevitable parts of life. Economists believed that government should be concerned with preventing inflation, and figuring out how to control its tendency to spend without taxing to pay for that spending. To do that, most economists of the time supported government running balanced budgets—except in periods of wartime—and in limiting increases in the money supply.

这种对政府角色的看法在20世纪30年代经济陷入深度萧条时发生了改变。萧条是指经济急剧衰退的时期,其特征是商业活动减少、物价下跌和失业。以今天的收入和消费标准来衡量,大多数美国人在20世纪20年代中后期都相对贫困,但我们必须谨慎地以现状来评判过去,因为与以往相比,人们正享受着一段前所未有的繁荣时期。诚然,包括农民在内的一些群体未能分享这种繁荣,但大多数美国人的收入比以往任何时候都要高。此外,房地产和股票价格的投机性大幅上涨,也助长了普遍的乐观情绪。

That view of the role of government changed in the 1930s when the economy fell into a deep depression. A depression is a period of drastic decline in an economy, characterized by decreasing business activity, falling prices, and unemployment. Most Americans, judged by today’s standards of income and consumption, were relatively poor in the middle and late 1920s, but we must be cautious in judging the past by the present, for in comparison with anything they had known before, people were enjoying a period of unprecedented prosperity. True, some groups, including farmers, did not share in this prosperity, but most Americans had achieved higher incomes than ever before. Furthermore, a great speculative rise in the prices of real estate and stocks had helped to create a general feeling of optimism.

这种感觉很快就被一些猛烈的冲击所驱散。1929年10月,股市暴跌,这只是一系列事件的开端,到1932年,这些事件将美国推入了历史上最严重的经济萧条。从1929年到1932年,工业产值和国民收入下降了约一半,失业人数从约300万上升到1200万至1500万,约占全国劳动力的四分之一。这些事件给数百万人带来了损失、沮丧和巨大的困境。

This feeling was soon dissipated by some rude shocks. In October 1929, there was a spectacular break in the stock market, and this was only the first of a series of developments that, by 1932, brought the country to the greatest depths of depression in its entire history. From 1929 to 1932, industrial production and national income dropped by about half, and unemployment rose from about three million to between twelve and fifteen million, or about a quarter of the nation’s labor force. These developments brought losses, discouragement, and great hardship to millions of people.

为了应对那场大萧条,政府在20世纪30年代制定了许多收入保障计划。政府还在维持经济就业水平和建立所谓的福利国家方面发挥了更大的作用。这一转变与后来被称为凯恩斯主义的观点密切相关——该观点认为政府能够而且应该在经济中发挥稳定作用。该理论以英国经济学家约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的名字命名,他的著作在推动这一转变方面发挥了重要作用。凯恩斯主义经济观的广泛应用,催生了有别于微观经济学的宏观经济学领域。

In response to that depression, in the 1930s the government instituted many of its income security programs. It also took a much greater role in maintaining the level of employment in the economy and in, creating what is known as a welfare state. This change was closely tied to what has become known as the Keynesian view—the view that government can and should play a stabilizing role in the economy. It is named after John Maynard Keynes, the English economist whose work played a big role in bringing about the change. The widespread adoption of the Keynesian view of the economy created the field of macroeconomics as distinct from that of microeconomics.

货币和财政政策

Monetary and Fiscal Policy

政府的宏观经济职能由负责财政政策的政府行政部门和负责货币政策的美国中央银行(即联邦储备银行,简称美联储)共同履行。我们来逐一讨论一下这两个职能。

Government’s macroeconomic role is performed by both the executive branch of government, which has responsibility for fiscal policy, and the Central Bank of the United States (the Federal Reserve Bank, or Fed)—a type of banker’s bank that has responsibility for monetary policy. Let’s discuss each in turn.

财政政策是一种利用政府预算盈余或赤字来影响经济支出和收入水平的政策。经济学家对财政政策的标准经验法则是:如果经济总支出过低,政府应该出现预算赤字;这种赤字会增加支出,从而增加总收入,并对总支出水平产生倍增效应。如果总支出过高,政府应该出现预算盈余;这种盈余会从总收入中扣除支出,从而对总支出水平产生倍增效应。

Fiscal policy is a policy of using the government budget surplus or deficit to influence the level of spending and income in the economy. The economist’s standard rule of thumb for vfiscal policy is that if total spending in the economy is too low, the government should run a budget deficit; this deficit adds spending to the total flow of income and has a multiplied effect on the total level of spending. If total spending is too high, the government should run a budget surplus; this surplus subtracts spending from the total flow of income and has a multiplied downward effect on the total level of spending.

美联储银行。© usschools/iStock

The Federal Reserve Bank. © usschools/iStock

这条经验法则认为,一些政府预算赤字可以有效刺激经济走出衰退。因此,如果美国经济陷入衰退,我们很可能会听到要求增加政府支出或降低税收以刺激经济的呼声。这正是我们在2008年听到的,当时美国经济似乎正处于自由落体状态。作为回应,政府出现了巨额赤字,从而避免了但它也带来了一个巨大的问题——如何让美国经济摆脱对赤字支出和救助的依赖,而到了2020年,美国仍在努力解决这个问题。

This rule of thumb allows that some government budget deficits can be useful in stimulating the economy out of a recession. Therefore, if the US economy falls into a recession, we are likely to hear calls for increases in government spending or decreases in taxes in order to stimulate the economy. That is precisely what we heard in 2008 when the US economy seemed to be in freefall. In response, the government ran a massive deficit and in doing so avoided a depression. But it also created an enormous problem—how to wean the US economy from the deficit spending and the bailouts, and in 2020, the United States was still struggling with this problem.

然后,在 2020 年,新冠疫情来袭,平衡预算的想法被打乱。美国政府制定了数万亿美元的救助计划,却没有考虑这些计划的资金来源。要了解这些计划的资金来源,我们需要讨论第二种宏观经济工具。第二种工具就是货币政策。货币政策是指中央银行通过改变经济中的货币和信贷水平来影响收入水平的政策。美联储 (Fed)是一个半自治机构,仅间接对国会和总统负责。它由总统任命的理事会管理,充当银行的银行。它发行借据 (IOU),作为我们货币供应的基础。(如果你看一下美元钞票,你会发现它是美联储券。)美元曾经由黄金支撑,而现在,美元仅由对其他人会接受美元的信任支撑。除了征税能力外,政府不为美元提供任何支持。货币之所以有价值,是因为美联储承诺只发行有限数量的纸币或借据。

Then, in 2020, the Covid pandemic hit, and thoughts of balancing the budget were discarded. The US government created trillion-dollar relief programs, without asking how they would be financed. To understand how they were financed, we need to discuss a second macroeconomic tool. That second tool is monetary policy. Monetary policy is a policy in which the Central Bank varies the level of money and credit in the economy to affect the level of income. The Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) is a semiautonomous agency that is only indirectly responsible to Congress and the president. It is run by a Board of Governors appointed by the president and serves as a bank to banks. It issues IOUs (also called notes) that serve as the basis of our money supply. (If you look on a dollar bill, you will see that it is a Federal Reserve note.) Whereas at one time gold backed the dollar, presently only trust in the fact that others will accept this dollar backs it. Tire government provides no backing for the dollar except its ability to tax. What gives money its value is that the Fed is committed to issuing only a limited quantity of its notes, or IOUs.

信贷和金融部门相当于经济的心脏。它们对经济至关重要,因为金融部门的崩溃意味着经济的心脏停止跳动;如果发生这种情况,企业和个人将无法借款或支付账单,不得不削减生产。这些生产削减可能会使经济陷入恶性循环,最终导致经济衰退。

Credit and the financial sector are the equivalent to an economy’s heart. They are essential to the economy because a failure of the financial sector means its heart stops beating; if that happens, firms and individuals cannot borrow or pay their bills, and they have to cut production. These cuts in production can push the economy into a downward spiral that ends in a depression.

关于货币政策技术运作的讨论最好留给经济学课程。你现在应该知道的是,货币政策并不直接影响收入水平;相反,它通过使个人和企业借贷更容易或更困难来影响利率。当美联储增加货币供应量时,这被称为扩张性货币政策。扩张性货币政策使信贷更容易获得并降低利率;随着利率下降,投资增加,这反过来对收入水平产生乘数效应(向上)。当美联储减少货币供应量时,这被称为紧缩性货币政策。紧缩性货币政策使信贷更难获得并提高利率。随着利率上升,投资减少,这反过来对收入水平产生乘数效应(向下)。

The discussion of the technical operation of monetary policy is best left to economics courses. What you should know now is that monetary policy does not affect the level of income directly; rather, it affects the interest rate by making it easier or harder for individuals and firms to borrow. When the Fed increases the money supply, it is called expansionary monetary policy. Expansionary monetary policy makes credit easier to get and lowers interest rates; as interest rates fall, investment increases, which in turn has a multiplied effect (upward) on the level of income. When the Fed decreases the money supply, it is called contractionary monetary policy. Contractionary monetary policy makes credit harder to get and raises interest rates. As interest rates rise, investment decreases, which in turn has a multiplied effect (downward) on the level of income.

尽管美联储是半自治的,但它已成为决定政府宏观经济政策的关键力量。其主席(杰罗姆·鲍威尔,2022年起)通常被视为仅次于总统的美国经济政策制定者。

The Federal Reserve has become a key player in determining government macroeconomic policy despite the fact that the Fed is semi-autonomous. Its chairperson (Jerome Powell as of 2022) is often seen as the second most powerful person in determining US economic policy, right after the president.

自2008年以来,美联储通过大幅增加货币供应量和经济中的可用信贷,将美国利率维持在低位,以刺激美国经济。美联储这样做的最初原因是2008年的金融危机,这场危机曾威胁到美国经济陷入萧条。刺激性货币政策使美国经济免于萧条,但也在经济中植入了低利率预期,美联储将低利率政策延续至2021年。一些经济学家认为,低利率正在鼓励个人、企业和政府借入超过其偿还能力的资金,这将在未来给美国经济带来严重的通货膨胀和债务问题。另一些人则认为通货膨胀并非严重问题,巨额赤字不会构成问题,因为如果没有通货膨胀,美国经济很可能会遭遇严重的衰退。2022年初,通货膨胀率上升;一些人认为这只是暂时的,并不是什么大问题;另一些人则认为通货膨胀是一个严重的问题,美联储必须尽快加息。另一些人则认为,我们可以在未来担心政府债务,而且我们将更有能力偿还债务,因为赤字使经济免于陷入新冠疫情引发的萧条。

Since 2008, the Fed kept the US interest rate low, by significantly increasing the money supply and available credit in the economy, in order to stimulate the US economy. The initial reason for doing so was the 2008 financial crisis, which threatened to lead the US economy into a depression. The stimulative monetary policy saved the US economy from a depression, but it also built into the economy an expectation of low interest rates, and the Fed has continued the low interest rate policy through 2021. Some economists have argued that these low interest rates are encouraging people, businesses, and government to borrow more than they will be able to pay back, which will cause serious inflation and debt problems for the US economy in the future. Others argued that inflation is not a serious concern, the large deficits do not present a problem since in their absence the US economy would likely suffer a serious recession. In the beginning of 2022, inflation increased; some argued it was temporary and not of major concern, others argued that it was of serious concern, and the Fed had to increase interest rates as soon as possible. Others argued that we can worry about government debt in the future, and that we will be in a better position to pay it off because the deficits kept the economy out of a Covid-induced depression.

美国未来面临的经济挑战

Economic Challenges Facing the United States in the Future

关于政府的宏观经济角色,还有很多话要说,但这类问题的讨论最好留给经济学课堂去讨论。这里我们只想向你介绍机构、术语和经济学家的思想。我们将通过考察经济学家对美国面临的一些挑战——债务挑战、全球化挑战、收入不平等挑战和气候变化挑战——的看法来做到这一点。

There is much more to be said about the government’s macroeconomic role, but discussion of such issues is best left to economics classes. Here we simply want to introduce you to the institutions, terms, and ideas of economists. We will do this by considering economists’ views on some challenges facing the United States—the debt challenge, the globalization challenge, the income inequality challenge, and the climate change challenge.

债务挑战

The Debt Challenge

附框概括了经济学家对债务问题思考的一个关键要素。经济学家称之为“没有免费的午餐”原则(凡事都有成本,最终必须付出代价)。经济学家认为这一原则适用于个人、政府和企业。经济学得出的核心政策主张之一是,成功的社会是那些设法将这一原则融入所有决策者决策过程的社会,以至于决策几乎无需思考即可发生。这也是经济学家倾向于支持市场的一个重要原因:市场让人们进行自愿交易。

The accompanying box captures a key element of economists’ thinking about the debt problem. Economists call it the “no free lunch” principle (everything has a cost and must ultimately be paid for). Economists see this principle as universal for individuals, governments, and businesses. One of the central policy propositions that economics has come to is that successful societies are those that have figured out ways to build this principle into the decision-making process of all decisions makers, so that it occurs almost without thinking. That’s an important reason why economists tend to support markets: Markets let people make voluntary trades

这会改善他们的命运。因此,当人们在市场上交易时,他们相信从交易中获得的收益超过了成本,这意味着即使交易需要放弃一些东西,他们也会因交易而受益。因此,在市场交易中,即使“没有免费午餐”的原则得到遵守,人们的境况也会得到改善。贸易让人们获得更便宜的午餐,而不是免费的午餐。

that improve their lot. So when people trade in the market, they believe that the benefits they get from the trade exceed the cost, which means that they are made better off by the trade, even when the trade takes into account that something must be given up. So in a market transaction, people are made better off even as the “no free lunch” principle is maintained. Trade allows people to get cheaper, not free, lunches.

虽然“没有免费的午餐”这一命题对于整个体系而言是同义反复,但对于体系的组成部分,例如个人、政府或企业,它并不总是成立。体系的一部分可以自己享用午餐,而其他部分则负责支付。政府、民众和企业都有强烈的动机这样做,而经济学家针对美国面临的经济挑战提出的许多建议都涉及采取措施,将“没有免费的午餐”原则融入社会决策之中。

While the “no free lunch” proposition is a tautology for the entire system, it is not always true for component parts of the system such as individuals, governments, or businesses. One part of a system can eat a lunch and leave the paying to other parts. Government, people, and businesses have a strong incentive to do precisely that, and much of economists’ advice about the economic challenges facing the United States involves instituting measures that build the “no free lunch” principle into society’s decisions.

债务可以让人们暂时摆脱“天下没有免费的午餐”的束缚。如果人们愿意接受债务——一种未来偿还的承诺——来换取眼前的回报,那么做出这种承诺的人除了承诺本身之外,什么也得不到。如果当借款人被要求履行承诺时,他/她或政府没有足够的资金来履行,那么就会出现问题。现实情况是,如果个人或政府真的无力偿还,那么强迫他们偿还是徒劳的。这就是债务造成的政策问题,也是社会持续面临的问题。

Debt allows people to temporarily get around the ‘no free lunch” proposition. To the degree people are willing to accept debt—a promise to pay in the future—in return for something now, an individual who makes that promise can get something for nothing but the promise. If, when the borrower is asked to make good on that promise, he, she, or it doesn’t have the wherewithal to do so, then there are problems. The reality is that if the person or government really can’t pay, it does no good to try to force them to pay. That’s the policy problem created by debt, and it is one that societies continually face.

一旦债务人无力偿还债务,部分债务就必须被免除。一旦陷入这种境地,经济学家们就无法给出一个好的答案。一组经济学家认为,我们应该让借款人破产,即使这不仅会给债务人,而且会给整个社会带来巨大的困难和痛苦。这种立场通常被称为“紧缩政策”,但支持者更愿意称之为责任政策。救助债务人的问题在于,它会鼓励更多债务人在未来陷入这种境地。人们会看到免费午餐的可能性,市场将无法正常运转。另一组经济学家认为,如果人们真的无力偿还贷款,你别无选择,只能救助他们,你应该尽力防止将来再次发生救助债务人的情况。

Once one is in a position where individuals who have the debt cannot repay it, then some part of the debt will have to be forgiven. Once that position has been reached, economists don’t have a good answer for what to do. One group of economists argues that we should just let the borrowers go bankrupt, even if it will cause enormous hardship and suffering not only for the debtor, but for all society. This position is often called “austerity,” but supporters prefer to call it a policy of responsibility. The problem with bailing out a debtor is that it will encourage more debtors to get in such a position in the future. People will see the possibility of free lunches, and the market will not work right. Another group of economists argue that if people really can’t repay the loan, you have no alternative but to bail them out, and that you should simply do your best to prevent the need to bail out debtors from happening again in the future.

我们之所以花些时间讨论这个原则,是因为未来几年你很可能会从新闻中看到债务违约的报道。其中一个主要原因是学生债务;现在很多学生的贷款是无法偿还的,因为学生从他们能够找到的工作中获得的收入远远不足以偿还他们所借的钱。截至2020年,已有4470万名在校和毕业生贷款,平均每人贷款37,584美元。

We spend time on this principle since you will likely see defaults on debt in the news in the coming years. A major reason for that is student debt; many loans are now being made to students that will be impossible to repay, since the students’ income from jobs that they will be able to get will be nowhere near high enough to repay what they have borrowed. As of 2020, 44.7 million current and former students had taken out loans that were an average of $37,584 each.

即将出现的另一场债务危机与养老金有关——具体来说,是企业、地方政府和州政府养老金计划的结构。许多养老金计划承诺的未来支付金额远远超出了企业、地方政府和州政府的支付能力。在所有这些情况下,唯一的解决办法要么是违约——以及巨大的痛苦和经济混乱——要么是联邦政府出手救助,并由联邦政府尽可能地承担损失。这些即将到来的债务危机将对我们社会体系的稳定造成巨大压力。

Another debt crisis on the horizon involves pensions—specifically the way pension plans by firms, local governments, and state governments have been structured. Many of these pension plans have promised payments in the future that far exceed the companies’ and local and state government’s ability to pay. The only solution in all these cases will be default—and enormous suffering and economic dislocation—or bailout by the federal government with the federal government assuming the loss as best it can. These coming debt crises will put significant strains on the stability of our social system.

总结经济学家对债务问题的看法:债务使个人和政府能够做他们原本无法做到的事情。如果债务人有赚钱能力偿还债务,或者至少能够继续支付债务利息,那么债务就能促进经济扩张,发挥其应有的作用。但债务人存在着强大的借贷压力,其借款额超过了其偿还能力。一旦发生这种情况,债务最终将引发一场经济学家无法给出有效答案的危机。

To summarize economists view of the debt problem: Debt allows individuals and governments to do things that they otherwise could not do. If debtors have the earning capability to pay that debt back, or at least to continue to pay the interest on the debt, then debt allows an expansion of the economy and serves a useful purpose. But there is strong pressure for borrowing to take place that exceeds the capacity of the borrower to repay. When that happens, the debt will eventually lead to a crisis for which economists have no good answer.

全球化挑战

The Globalization Challenge

二十世纪初,美国成为世界主导经济强国;在整个二十世纪,它的工资水平和工业实力都远超世界上任何其他国家。如今,这种情况正在发生变化,工业强国正从美国转向新兴发达国家。尽管全球化这个名称相当新,但其本身却由来已久。几个世纪以来,全球化一直在不断演变。例如,在十七、八世纪的殖民时期,殖民地被并入控制它们的经济体,其母国与其殖民地之间开展了大量贸易。1914年,第一次世界大战结束了殖民全球化时代。直到第二次世界大战结束,全球贸易才开始复苏。自那时起,全球化又大大扩展,但重要的是要理解全球化对我们这一代人来说并不新鲜,几个世纪以来,世界各国的经济一直处于不断融合、分离和重新融合的过程中。

In the beginning of the twentieth century, the United States became the world’s dominant economic power; throughout the twentieth century, it had higher wages, and much more industrial power than any other country in the world. That is now in the process of change, as industrial power is shifting from the United States to newly developed countries. Although the name globalization is fairly new, the phenomenon is not. It is a process that has been ebbing and flowing for centuries. For example, in the colonialization period of the 1600s and 1700s, colonial “possessions” were integrated into the economies that controlled them, and there was much trade between the home country and its colonies. In 1914, World War I ended the era of colonial globalization. Global trade did not begin to recover until the end of World War II. Since then, it has re-expanded greatly, but it is important to understand that globalization is not new to our generation, and that the world’s economies have been in a continual process of integration, segregation, and reintegration for centuries.

二十世纪,许多美国人开始想当然地认为美国的人均收入高于世界人均收入。二战刚结束后的那段时期,美国的实力不断增强,美国工资涨幅远超其他国家;美国的技术也远远领先于其他国家,美国的经济实力无人可撼动。全球化危机要求人们认清这样一个事实:美国的经济主导地位并非与生俱来,而且在未来几十年,其主导地位很可能会下降。美国主导地位下降的原因在于,一个国家无限期地占据主导地位本身就不是一种稳定的局面。它违反了经济学家所谓的“一价定律”。该定律指出,如果资源和技术自由流动,同等的生产要素往往会产生同等的收益,可贸易商品的价格也往往相同。

During the twentieth century, many Americans began to take it as given that US per capita income would be higher than world per capita income. In the period immediately after World War II, US power grew and US wages rose far above those of other countries; US technology also was far above others, and US economic might was unchallenged. The globalization crisis involves coming to grips with the realization that US economic dominance is not inherent and that very likely, in the coming decades, its dominance will decline. The reason why US dominance will decline is because indefinite dominance by one country is not a stable situation to begin with. It violates what economists call the law of one price, which states that if a free flow of resources and technology exists, equally productive factors will tend to earn equal amounts, and tradable goods will tend to have the same price.

根据一价定律,最终——假设他们的生产力相同——中国、印度或非洲工程师的收入将与美国工程师相同。该定律成立的原因是,如果情况并非如此,企业就会将生产转移到劳动力成本更低的地区。这种使同等生产力工人的工资均等化的过程被称为要素价格均等化。自二战结束以来,这一现象一直在发生——首先是欧洲、日本和韩国经济的增长,最近是印度和中国经济相对于美国的增长。

According to the law of one price, eventually—assuming they are equally productive—a Chinese, Indian, or African engineer will earn the same as a US engineer. This law holds because, if it is not the case, firms will relocate production to areas with lower-cost workers. This process of equalizing wages of equally productive workers is called factor price equalization. It has been occurring since the end of World War II—first with the growth of the European, Japanese, and Korean economies, and more recently with the growth of India’s and Chinas economies relative to the United States.

© www.cartoonstock.com

© www.cartoonstock.com

需要注意的一个重要条件是,一价定律依赖于资源和技术的自由流动,而这在经济的许多领域并不成立。例如,美国人无法从中国或印度的人那里理发,因此理发是不可交易的。这意味着,中国理发师的收入可以低于美国理发师,而美国理发师不必担心丢掉工作。同样,如果美国公司能够获得更好的尽管美国企业的技术水平高于中国和印度企业,就像二十世纪大部分时间的情况一样,但美国企业可以获得比中国和印度企业更高的利润,支付更高的工资。

An important condition to note is that the law of one price is dependent on a free flow of resources and technology, and in many sectors of the economy that does not hold. For example, an American cannot get a haircut from someone in China or India, so haircuts are not tradable. This means that a Chinese haircutter can receive less than a US haircutter without the US haircutter worrying about losing his or her job. Similarly, if US firms have access to better technology than Chinese and Indian firms, which was the case for much of the twentieth century, US firms can earn higher profits and pay higher wages than Chinese and Indian firms.

二十世纪末二十一世纪初,这些限定条件——曾经使许多美国工人的收入远超其他国家工人——逐渐消失。原因之一是技术开辟了以前不存在的贸易新领域。贸易扩张既发生在商品领域,也发生在服务领域。由于航运和运输技术的巨大变革,货物贸易得以扩大。现代集装箱使大件物品的运输成本远低于以往。如今,海洋中挤满了巨大的集装箱船,它们在港口卸货并由计算机化系统发送,大大降低了运输成本。

In the late twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first century, those qualifiers—which made it possible for US incomes of many US workers to significantly exceed those of workers in other countries—have been fading away. One reason is because technology has opened up new areas where trade can take place that did not exist before. This expansion of trade has occurred in both goods and services. Trade has expanded in terms of goods because of enormous technological changes in shipping and transportation. Modern containers allow much lower-cost shipping of bulky items than was previously possible. Today, the oceans are filled with gigantic containerized ships that are unloaded at ports and sent on their way by computerized systems that have significantly lowered the cost of shipping.

数字通信技术也使得与世界各地的公司实现即时联系成为可能,这在很大程度上削弱了在美国为美国消费者生产的优势。与此同时,此前对市场持敌对态度的国家已将市场引入其经济,从而成为贸易伙伴和竞争对手,创造了数十亿潜在的额外劳动力来竞争就业岗位。这给美国制造业带来了巨大的竞争,并改变了其本质:美国消费者消费的大多数制成品都在美国生产,而美国消费者消费的大多数制成品都产自海外。如今,美国制造业专注于某些利基市场和高科技消费品,并专注于研发。中国现在比美国更像世界工厂。

Digital communications technology has also allowed instant contact with firms all over the world, which reduces much of the advantage of producing for US consumers in the United States. Simultaneously, countries previously hostile to markets have introduced markets into their economies and thus have become trading partners and competitors, creating billions of additional potential workers competing for a job. This has added enormous competition to the manufacturing sector in the United States and has changed its very nature, from one where most manufactured goods consumed by US consumers were produced in the United States, to one where most US manufactured goods consumed by US customers are produced abroad. Today, US manufacturing specializes in certain niche and high-tech consumption goods and in research and development. China is now the factory for the world much more than is the United States.

这种转移不仅发生在商品领域,也发生在服务业领域。服务业工作岗位流失到其他国家,这被称为外包——工作岗位从美国转移到工资较低的发展中国家。因此,虽然美国理发师没有面临来自海外的竞争,但从事服务支持工作的人员却面临着竞争。例如,现在的呼叫中心通常设在印度和其他英语发展中国家。因此,当你打电话寻求电脑技术支持或咨询账单问题时,很可能会有印度的工作人员接听。

It is not only in goods that this movement has taken place. It is also in services, and the loss of service jobs to other countries goes under the name outsourcing—the shifting of jobs from the United States to lower-wage developing countries. Thus, while US haircutters do not face competition from abroad, people working in service support positions do. For example, call centers now are typically found in India and other English-speaking developing countries. So when you call for technical support on your computer or with a question about your bill, the telephone call will likely be handled by someone in India.

同样,越来越多的公司在印度从事会计和簿记工作。竞争领域正在扩大。比如说你需要辅导,现在你可以上网聘请一位印度家教来辅导你的作业。我们可以预见未来类似的竞争会更加激烈。

Similarly, accounting and bookkeeping for firms is more and more done in India. The areas of competition are expanding. Say you need some tutoring. Now you can go online and hire an Indian tutor to help you with your homework. We can expect much more such competition in the future.

为了在全球化经济中保持主导地位,并维持随之而来的更高工资水平,美国必须保持相对于其他国家的技术优势。随着印度和中国在技术阶梯上的不断攀升,做到这一点可能会变得越来越困难——就像日本、韩国和欧洲国家之前所做的那样。这并不意味着美国的收入必须从目前的水平下降;这只意味着收入和产出的最大增长可能出现在中国和印度等国家,而美国和欧洲的增长速度将相对较慢。

To maintain its dominance in a globalized economy, and the higher wages that go with that dominance, the United States will have to maintain a technological edge over other countries. Doing so will likely become increasingly difficult as India and China move up the technological ladder—just as Japan, Korea, and the European countries did earlier. This does not mean that US income must fall from where it is now; it only means that the largest growth in income and output will likely be in countries such as China and India, and that the United States and Europe will experience relatively slower growth.

经济学家能提供什么来应对全球化危机?如果你想找一个简单的解决办法,答案是“没什么”。他们认为全球化是一个不可避免的过程,而不是一场危机。他们认为,一个国家能做的最好的事情就是学会适应它。它必须专注于尽可能高效的生产,并且必须学会不再将自己视为特殊。在一个经济体中,只有当你能以比别人更低的成本生产出人们想要的商品时,你才算特殊。特朗普总统和拜登总统都背离了自由贸易,并对进口产品征收关税。这导致其他国家也对美国出口产品征收关税,我们可以预见,未来几年将出现一场背离自由贸易的潮流。

What do economists have to offer to meet the globalization crisis? If you are looking for an easy fix, the answer is “not much.” They see globalization as an inevitable process, not a crisis. They argue that the best a country can do is to learn to live with it. It must concentrate on producing as efficiently as possible and must learn to no longer see itself as special. In an economy, you are only special to the degree that you can produce goods people want at a lower cost than others. Both President Trump and President Biden moved away from free trade and implemented tariffs on imports. That has led other countries to impose tariffs on US exports, and we can expect to see a movement away from free trade in the coming years.

为什么美国不应该通过征收关税来增加我们的就业?正如我们将在第20章讨论的那样,经济学家认为,征收关税会导致其他国家也征收关税,从而减少对美国商品的需求,并可能导致世界经济陷入贸易战。随着全球化进程的推进,市场正在按照其设计意图运行——将生产导向成本最低的地区,从而尽可能高效地生产商品。正是这种商品和服务的全球化,才使得美国拥有了如今的高生活水平。因此,经济学家应对全球化挑战的解决方案是,美国应该学会适应全球化,并尽其所能地竞争以维持其生活水平。这种竞争的结果是,美国企业将被迫开发创造性的解决方案,以保持市场领先地位。

Why shouldn’t the United States impose tariffs to project our jobs? As we will discuss in Chapter 20, economists argue that imposing tariffs would lead to other countries imposing tariffs, which would reduce demand for US goods, and which could enter the world economy into a trade war. With the globalization process, the market is doing precisely what it is designed to do—channeling production to the lowest-cost area so that goods are produced as efficiently as possible. It is this globalization of goods and services that has allowed the United States to develop the high standard of living it enjoys today. So, economists’ solution to the globalization challenge is that the United States should learn to live with it and compete as hard as it can to maintain its standard of living. As a result of this competition, US businesses will be pushed to develop creative solutions in order to be at the cutting-edge of the market.

收入不平等的挑战

The Income Inequality Challenge

现在让我们来看看美国经济面临的第三个挑战——收入不平等。市场经济建立在社会契约的基础上——这是一种隐含的理解,即只要社会中绝大多数人能够获得晋升机会,社会中的个人就会被赋予行动的自由,人们就不会过多地抱怨收入不平等——只要一个人努力工作,按照社会的期望去做,他就能拥有充实的人生。他可以预期自己的前途会超过父母。从20世纪30年代到70年代,美国的情况就是这样。收入不平等现象有所缓解,贫富差距缩小,与此同时,整体经济却在增长。

Now let’s turn to a third challenge facing the US economy—the income inequality challenge. Market economies are built on social contracts—an implicit understanding that individuals in society will be given freedom to act and people will not complain about income inequality too much as long as the large majority of individuals in society can be provided with chances for advancement—that if one works hard, and does what society expects from them, then one can have a fulfilling life. One can expect that one’s prospects will exceed those of one’s parents. From the 1930s to the 1970s, that was the case in the United States. Income inequality fell, the difference between the rich and poor declined, while simultaneously the overall economy was growing.

生活水平的提高和不平等现象的缩小与大多数美国人的普遍看法相符,他们认为巨大的收入不平等会给民主制度的正常运转带来问题。20世纪80年代,不平等现象不仅没有缩小,反而开始加剧。非技术工人受到的影响最大,他们的工资停滞不前,以至于即使扣除通胀因素,他们的工资也根本没有上涨;而收入最高的人群,即使扣除通胀因素,收入也一直是他们之前的两到三倍。例如,1965年,首席执行官的薪酬是最低收入工人的20倍,而最低收入工人的薪酬是首席执行官的20倍。如今,这一比例已接近200比1。

The rising standard of living and the declining inequality were consistent with the general belief of most people in the United States that large inequalities in income cause problems for a functioning democracy. In the 1980s, the inequality stopped declining and instead began increasing. Unskilled workers were the most affected, seeing their wages stagnate so much that when adjusted for inflation, their wages have not risen at all; while individuals on the high end of the income spectrum have been earning double or triple what they were earning, even after adjusting for inflation. For instance, in 1965, CEO compensation was $20 for every $1 the lowest earning worker earned. Today, that ratio is closer to $200 to $1.

造成不平等加剧的原因多种多样。一方面是政治因素——在此期间,所得税的累进税率被降低;另一方面是社会因素——人们的观念发生了变化,即使公司大多数员工的工资都在下降,公司高层管理人员也愿意给自己大幅加薪;另一方面是技术因素——新技术的发展使得中低技能工作岗位被“赢家通吃”的行业所取代,在这些行业中,顶尖公司赚取数十亿美元,而其他竞争对手却无法盈利。新技术还使得机器和计算机取代了低技能和重复性的工作。这种情况已经持续了几十年。

The reasons for this increase in inequality are varied. They are political—the progressivity of the income tax was reduced during this time period; sociological—the mores changed, and it became acceptable for top managers in firms to give themselves large increases in pay even when most workers in the firm were seeing their pay fall; and technological—new technologies developed which allowed low- and medium-skilled jobs to be replaced with winner-take-all industries, in which the top firm makes billions but other competitors do not make a profit. New technologies also allow machines and computers to replace low-skilled and repeatable jobs. This has gone on for decades.

如今的不同之处在于,“低技能”的含义正在发生变化。它过去指的是挖洞或操作机器之类的工作。如今,随着人工智能的扩展,“低技能”将涵盖许多此前被视为技术性活动,例如驾驶;标准诊断工作(大多数医生的主要工作);教学标准教材(教师和教授的主要工作);以及投资选择(许多金融中层管理人员的主要工作)。当医生、教授和管理人员的工作被视为“低技能”时,社会将面临巨大的变化,社会收入分配的基本方式可能需要重新思考。

What is now different is that what is meant by “low-skilled” is changing. It used to mean jobs like digging a hole, or manning a machine. Now with the expansion of artificial intelligence, “low-skilled” will include many activities that previously were seen as skilled, including driving; standard diagnostic work, the primary work that most doctors do; teaching standard material, the primary work that teachers and professors do; and choosing among investment alternatives, a primary job of many middle managers in finance. When what doctors, professors, and managers do is considered “low-skilled,” society is in for some enormous changes, and the basic way in which society distributes income will likely need to be rethought.

“占领华尔街”运动抗议收入不平等。© Alamy

Occupy Wall Street protests against income inequality. © Alamy

全球化也在收入不平等挑战中发挥了重要作用。面临全球竞争的工人,包括制造业的许多低技能工人,其收入被压低至全球低水平;而面临较少全球竞争的行业,例如政府工作人员、教师和律师,其工资则有所上涨。如前所述,这一进程正在发生变化,过去被认为是稳定的中产阶级专业工作,未来几年将面临收入下降的压力。

Globalization has also played an important role in the income inequality challenge. Workers who faced global competition, including many lower-skilled workers in the manufacturing sector, have seen their incomes pushed down to low global levels, and workers in sectors who face less global competition, such as government workers, teachers, and lawyers, have seen their wages rise. As discussed previously, that process is now changing, and what were considered solid middle-class professional jobs will be experiencing downward pressure on their incomes in the coming years.

经济学家对于如何应对这一收入分配挑战尚无定论,部分原因是他们分析的重点并非收入分配,部分原因是这些问题的政治性大于经济性。因此,收入不平等在未来几年可能仍将是一个值得讨论的话题。

Economists do not have a good answer on how to deal with this income distribution challenge, in part because they have not focused their analysis on income distribution and in part because the issues are more political than they are economic. So income inequality will likely continue to be a topic of discussion in the coming years.

气候变化挑战

The Climate Change Challenge

最后,让我们来思考第四个挑战——气候变化。这一挑战不仅美国,而是全世界都面临着。气候变化的发生是因为过多的经济生产使用碳基燃料,这增加了大气中二氧化碳等温室气体的含量用经济学家的话来说,碳基燃料的使用正在产生外部性,正如我们之前所述,这是决策者没有考虑到的决策结果。因此,虽然私人决策者权衡了其面临的成本和收益,但这些私人成本与该行动给社会带来的社会成本并不匹配。这种情况在碳基燃料的消费中如此普遍,以至于它通过增加二氧化碳水平,从而升高全球平均气温,改变了全球大气。其结果是海平面上升,许多地区的天气也发生了著变化。 (2020 年,西海岸再次经历了极端而毁灭性的野火。)如果如预测的那样,未来一个世纪海平面上升 1 至 5 英尺,低洼地区将面临洪水侵袭。

Let’s conclude with a consideration of a fourth challenge—one that not only the United States, but the entire world, is facing—climate change. Climate change is occurring because too much economic production is using carbon-based fuels, which increase the levels of greenhouse gases, such as CO2' in the atmosphere. In the words of economists, the use of carbon-based fuels is creating an externality, which, as we stated earlier, is the result of a decision that is not taken into account by the decision maker. Thus, while the private decision maker balances the costs and benefits facing him or her, those private costs do not match the social costs that the action imposes on society. This is occurring so much in the consumption of carbon- based fuels that it is changing the world’s atmosphere by increasing CO2 levels and thereby increasing the average world temperature. The result is a rising sea level and significant weather changes for many areas. (In 2020, the West Coast again experienced extreme and devastating wildfires.) Low-lying areas face flooding if, as predicted, the sea rises by 1 to 5 feet over the next century.

经济学家对气候变化问题的答案是确保决策者将使用碳基燃料的成本纳入考量。这可以通过对碳基燃料征税,让人们承担真正的社会成本,或者建立限额与交易制度——本质上是创造污染的产权。

Economists’ answer to the problem of climate change is to see that the costs of the decision to use carbon-based fuel are taken into account by the decision maker. This can be done either by placing a tax on carbon-based fuel so that people face the true social cost, or by creating a cap-and-trade system—essentially creating property rights in pollution.

鉴于美国政府面临的财政问题以及额外收入的需求,大多数经济学家倾向于采用以税收为基础的方案,但从政治角度来看,征税颇具难度,而美国选择对改变现状所必需的实质性改革保持沉默。不过,美国正在缓慢地开始建立污染限额与交易市场。在建立这些市场时,美国必须回答一个问题:谁将获得产权?大多数经济学家赞成政府获得污染产权,因为这将意味着政府所需的数千亿美元的收入。这样一来,所有污染者都必须为污染买单,而美国也将有收入来减少赤字。

Given the fiscal problems the US government faces—and the need for additional revenue—the tax-based approach is the one most economists favor, but imposing taxes is difficult politically, and the United States has chosen to do little in the way of the substantial changes that will be necessary to make a difference. But, slowly, it is beginning to create cap-and-trade markets in pollution. As it set them up, it had to answer the question: Who would get the property rights? Most economists favored government receiving the property rights to pollution because it would have meant hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue that the government needs. All polluters would then have to pay for the pollution, and the United States would have revenue to reduce its deficit.

美国政府最初采纳了经济学家的建议,但很快又改变了主意,将大部分权利赋予了现有的污染企业。这样,现有的污染企业就无需付费,而是可以把污染权出售给新企业,通过减少污染获得收入。这种关于产权的决定使得限额与交易制度的实施在政治上可行,但从经济学家的角度来看,它却存在很大问题,因为它本质上巩固了现有企业的根基,并使创建新企业的成本更高。在限额与交易制度下,现有企业拥有产权,在美国成立的新企业必须从减少二氧化碳排放量的现有企业那里购买污染许可证这使它们在竞争中处于劣势,从而减缓了新企业通常会引入的新技术的引进。

Initially, the US government followed economists’ suggestion, but it soon backed away from that and gave most of the rights to existing polluters. Thus, existing polluters would not have to pay; instead, they could sell pollution rights to new firms, gaining income for reducing pollution. This decision on property rights made the implementation of the cap-and-trade system politically feasible but, from economists’ standpoint, highly problematic since it essentially entrenched existing companies, and made creating new firms costlier. In a cap-and-trade system, with existing firms having the property rights, new companies starting in the United States will have to buy pollution permits from existing firms who reduce their CO2 output; this places them at a competitive disadvantage to existing companies, and thereby slows the introduction of new technologies that the new companies generally introduce.

经济学家还指出,气候变化的解决方案必须在全球范围内实施,否则,企业只会迁往监管最薄弱的地方。企业将逃向监管最低的领域。因此,如果没有一项所有国家都遵守的严格国际协议,气候变化解决方案几乎难以实现。因此,经济学家对气候变化的看法是,社会应该预期全球气候变暖,因为有效的解决方案超出了我们现有的国际制度结构,而自愿措施在处理成本高昂的问题时行不通。

Economists also point out that the solution to climate change must occur at the global level because, otherwise, firms will simply move to where restrictions are weakest. There will be a flight to the lowest level of regulation. Thus, without a strict international agreement that all countries of the world abide by, it is almost inconceivable that a climate change solution will be achieved. So, the economists’ perspective on climate change is that society should expect a warmer world because effective solutions are beyond our current international institutional structure, and voluntary measures do not work when dealing with problems that involve costly solutions.

正如我们在第五章中讨论的那样,2015 年 12 月在巴黎举行了一场旨在促进国际合作以遏制气候变化的会议。世界上绝大多数国家派代表前往巴黎,旨在制定二氧化碳排放参数以减缓全球变暖的速度。在此次大会上,签署国同意采取行动,将全球气温升幅控制在比工业化前水平高出1.5摄氏度以内。20​​17年的一项研究得出结论,如果实现《巴黎气候协定》的目标,下个世纪海平面上升中值可以控制在1.7英尺(约5.7米)以内。

As we discussed in Chapter 5, an attempt to facilitate international cooperation to curb climate change took place in Paris in December 2015. A vast majority of the worlds countries sent representatives to Paris with the goal of creating parameters for CO2 emissions that could help slow the pace of global warming. At this convention, the signatory countries agreed to take action to cap global temperature increase at 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. A 2017 study concluded that if the goals of the Paris climate agreement were met, median sea level rise in the next century could be kept to 1.7 feet.

美国同意的减排量比中国和印度等国更大,特朗普总统上任后认为该协定不公平。他于2020年正式宣布美国退出《巴黎气候协定》。特朗普退出该协定后,美国一些州和企业承诺自行满足协定要求,即使整个国家不会这样做。2021年,约瑟夫·拜登击败特朗普,当选总统。随着民主党再次执掌美国政府,美国重新加入了全球气候协定。

The United States agreed to more reduction than did countries such as China and India, and when President Trump took office he argued that the Accord was unfair. He officially withdrew the United States from the Paris Climate Accord in 2020. When Trump withdrew from the Accord, several US states and companies committed to meet the agreements requirements on their own, even if the country as a whole would not. In 2021 Joseph Biden defeated Trump and became president. With the Democrats again in charge of the U.S. government, the U.S rejoined the global climate agreements.

结论

Conclusion

关于所有这些问题,还有很多可以讨论的,但我们时间有限。尽管结构比较粗略,本章和前一章应该能让你了解经济学家的方法及其对美国经济面临的经济挑战的思考。这种思考包含对政府政策和行动成本和收益的明确考量。目标是最小化成本,同时最大化法律和政策带来的收益。实施这些政策并非易事,而且往往在政治上也颇为困难,这就是为什么经济学本身并不能提供问题的答案。它只是提供了一个框架。实际问题的答案既需要在政治领域寻找,也需要在经济领域寻找。

Much more could be discussed on all of these issues, but we don’t have time. However, despite the cursory structure, this chapter and the preceding chapter should give you a sense of economists’ approach and their thinking about the economic challenges facing the US economy. Such thinking involves an explicit consideration of both the costs and benefits of government policy and actions. The goal is to minimize costs while maximizing the benefits that laws and policies achieve. Imposing those policies is not easy, and is often politically difficult, which is why economics alone does not provide answers to problems. It simply provides a framework. The answers to the actual problem have to be found in the realm of politics as much as in the realm of economics.

学习回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 政府在经济中既扮演着间接角色(制定规则和监管经济),也扮演着直接角色(通过支出和征税来支付支出)。
  • Government plays both an indirect role in the economy—setting the rules and regulating the economy—and a direct role—spending and taxing to pay for its spending.
  • 监管既有好处,也有坏处。它有助于限制人们从事可能伤害他人的活动,但这样做也限制了人们的行为,并常常阻止他们从事可能对他人有益的活动。
  • Regulation has both benefits and costs. It helps limit people from activities that might hurt others, but in doing so restricts peoples actions and often stops them from activities that would be beneficial to others.
  • 监管是一个持续的过程,因为技术在变化,人们在学习如何规避现有的监管。
  • Regulation is a continuous process because technologies change and people learn how to get around existing regulations.
  • 政府的两个有争议的角色是其收入再分配角色和宏观经济角色。
  • Two contentious roles of the government are its income redistribution role and its macroeconomic role.
  • 联邦政府的一项重要支出是社会保障计划,而该计划的融资在未来可能会出现问题。
  • An important federal government expenditure is the Social Security program, and financing the program may present problems in the future.
  • 政府通过财政政策(利用政府预算盈余或赤字来控制经济支出水平)和货币政策(允许美联储银行控制经济中的货币和信贷水平)来影响经济活动水平。
  • The government influences the level of activity in the economy with fiscal policy—using the government budget surplus or deficit to control the level of spending in the economy—and by monetary policy—allowing the Federal Reserve Bank to control the level of money and credit in the economy.
  • 未来几年美国将面临许多经济挑战,包括债务挑战、全球化挑战、收入不平等挑战和气候变化挑战。
  • Tire United States faces a number of economic challenges in the coming years, including the debt challenge, the globalization challenge, the income inequality challenge, and the climate change challenge.
  • 经济学家的一个关键原则是“没有免费的午餐”原则。
  • One of economists’ key principles is the “no free lunch” principle.
  • 全球化是经济一体化的自然过程,受一价定律驱动。
  • Globalization is the natural process of economic integration and is driven by the law of one price.
  • 经济学家认为,为了有效应对气候变化,必须大幅提高导致气候变化的活动的成本。
  • Economists believe that to deal effectively with climate change, the costs of activities that contribute to climate change will have to be raised considerably.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 商业周期(339)
  • business cycles (339)
  • 抑郁症(340)
  • depression (340)
  • 外部性(332)
  • externalities (332)
  • 联邦保险缴款法(FICA) (338)
  • Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) (338)
  • 联邦储备银行(Fed) (341)
  • Federal Reserve Bank (Fed) (341)
  • 财政政策 (340)
  • fiscal policy (340)
  • 全球化 (342)
  • globalization (342)
  • 凯恩斯主义观点 (340)
  • Keynesian view (340)
  • 自由放任(319)
  • laissez-faire (319)
  • 一价定律(344)
  • law of one price (344)
  • 宏观经济作用 (339)
  • macroeconomic role (339)
  • 微观经济作用(339)
  • microeconomic role (339)
  • 货币政策(341)
  • monetary policy (341)
  • “没有免费的午餐”原则(342)
  • “no free lunch” principle (342)
  • 外包(345)
  • outsourcing (345)
  • 巴黎气候协定 (348)
  • Paris Climate Accord (348)
  • 累进所得税制(337)
  • progressive income tax system (337)
  • 公共物品(334)
  • public goods (334)
  • 无资金支持的任务(331)
  • unfunded mandates (331)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 联邦政府每年大约花费多少钱来资助其活动?因此,它是出现赤字还是盈余?
  2. About how much does the federal government spend each year to finance its activities? As a result, does it run a deficit or a surplus?
  3. 美国政府迄今为止针对全球变暖问题做了什么?为什么这一问题需要国际解决方案?
  4. What has the US government done so far in response to the issue of global warming, and why does this issue require an international solution?
  5. 虽然人们乐于在制造业上投入更多资金,但为什么人们对于在医疗保健和教育方面增加支出感到不安呢?
  6. While spending more money on manufacturing goods is looked upon favorably, why do people feel uneasy about additional spending on health care and education?
  7. 州政府每年在哪些主要类别上花费最多资金?
  8. On what major category do state governments spend the most money per year?
  9. 什么是财政政策?哪个实体执行财政政策?
  10. What is fiscal policy, and what entity conducts it?
  11. 什么是货币政策?哪个实体执行货币政策?
  12. What is monetary policy, and what entity conducts it?
  13. 政府未来在支付社会保障福利方面可能面临哪些问题?
  14. What problems is the government likely to face in paying Social Security benefits in the future?
  15. 凯恩斯主义的观点是什么?
  16. What is the Keynesian view?
  17. 联邦政府是否应该允许无执照律师执业?为什么?
  18. Should the federal government allow an unlicensed lawyer to practice law? Why or why not?
  19. 征收关税最有可能出现什么问题?
  20. What problem will most likely arise when tariffs are imposed?
  21. 美国政府采取了哪些措施来避免新冠病毒引发的金融危机?从长远来看,这将产生什么影响?
  22. What measures did the US government take to avoid a financial crisis due to the coronavirus? What effects will this have in the long run?
  23. 外包最终会导致美国所有制造业转移到工资较低的国家吗?
  24. Will outsourcing ultimately lead to a shift of all US manufacturing to lower-wage countries?
  25. 举两个例子说明政府法律如何间接影响收入分配。
  26. Give two examples of how government laws can indirectly influence the distribution of income.
  27. “没有免费的午餐”原则对于债务有何影响?
  28. What are the implications of the “no free lunch” principle for debt?
  29. 什么是一价定律?它对美国工人的工资意味着什么?
  30. What is the law of one price, and what does it mean for the wages of US workers?
  31. 信息革命如何改变收入分配政策?
  32. How is the information revolution changing the politics of income distribution?
  33. 赢者通吃的行业如何加剧收入不平等?
  34. How does a winner-take-all industry increase income inequality?
  35. 作者说解决全球变暖问题超出了我们现有的国际体制结构的范围,他们的意思是什么?
  36. What do the authors mean when they say that solutions to global warming are beyond our current international institutional structure?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 请访问税务管理员联合会 (Federation of Tax Administrators) 的网站www.taxadmin.org/。你所在的州征收所得税吗?根据最新数据,你所在的州的最低和最高所得税税率是多少?税制是累进制吗?请解释一下。
  2. Go to www.taxadmin.org/, the website of the Federation of Tax Administrators. Does your state have an income tax? Using the latest figures, what is the lowest and highest income tax rate for your state? Is it a progressive tax system? Explain.
  3. 请访问国会预算办公室网站www.cbo.gov/publication/56516。2020年,社会保障支出占 GDP 的多少百分比?到 2050 年,这个比例将如何变化?
  4. Go to www.cbo.gov/publication/56516, the site of the Congressional Budget Office. What percentage of the GDP was spent on social security in 2020? How will that percentage change by 2050?
  5. 请访问公共债务局网站www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/pd.htm。当前国债总额是多少?最近一个月的利率是多少?去年同期的利率是多少?
  6. Go to www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/pd.htm, the site of the Bureau of the Public Debt. What is the current amount of the national debt? What is the interest rate for the latest month? For the same month in the previous year?
  7. 使用快速计算器www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/estimator.html,根据您目前掌握的信息估算您的社会保障福利。您认为社会保障金值得吗?
  8. Using a quick calculator, www.ssa.gov/benefits/retirement/estimator.html, estimate your Social Security benefits with the information you have now. Do you think Social Security payments are worth the expense?
  9. 根据美联储www.federalreserve.gov/faqs.htm的说法,它的职责是什么?
  10. According to the Federal Reserve, www.federalreserve.gov/faqs.htm, what are its responsibilities?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 鲍莫尔,威廉·J.、罗伯特·E·利坦和卡尔·J·施拉姆,《好的资本主义,坏的资本主义以及增长和繁​​荣的经济学》,康涅狄格州纽黑文:耶鲁大学出版社,2007 年。
  • Baumol, William J., Robert E. Litan, and Carl. J. Schramm, Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007.
  • Brynjolfsson,Erik 和 Andrew McAffe,《第二次机器时代》纽约:WW Norton,2014 年。
  • Brynjolfsson, Erik, and Andrew McAffe, The Second Machine Age, New York: W. W. Norton, 2014.
  • 卡特,扎卡里·D. 《和平的代价:金钱、民主与约翰·梅纳德·凯恩斯的生平》,纽约:兰登书屋,2020 年。
  • Carter, Zachary D. The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, New York: Random House, 2020.
  • 埃伦赖希,芭芭拉,《镍币和角币:在美国(不)生存》纽约:霍尔特出版社,2001 年。
  • Ehrenreich, Barbara, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, New York: Holt Publishing, 2001.
  • 弗里登,杰弗里·A.,《全球资本主义:二十世纪的衰落与崛起,以及二十一世纪的挫折》,纽约:诺顿出版社,2020 年。
  • Frieden, Jeffry A., Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century, and Its Stumbles in the Twenty-First, New York: Norton Publishers, 2020.
  • 弗里德曼,米尔顿,《资本主义与自由》,伊利诺伊州芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社,1982 年。
  • Friedman, Milton, Capitalism and Freedom, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
  • Hacker, Jacob S. 和 Pierson Paul,《赢者通吃政治:华盛顿如何让富人更富,而背弃中产阶级》,纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2010 年。
  • Hacker, Jacob S., and Pierson Paul, Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer-and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010.
  • Heilbroner,Robert,L.,《世俗哲学家:伟大经济思想家的生活、时代和思想》伦敦:Allen Lane,1969 年。
  • Heilbroner, Robert, L., The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers, London: Allen Lane, 1969.
  • 朱迪斯,约翰·B.,《民粹主义爆发:大衰退如何改变美国和欧洲政治》,纽约:哥伦比亚全球报告,2016 年。
  • Judis, John B., The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics, New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2016.
  • 克莱因,娜奥米,《这改变了一切:资本主义与气候》纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2014 年。
  • Klein, Naomi, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2014.
  • 麦克基本,比尔,《深度经济:经济财富与持久未来》纽约:亨利霍尔特公司,2007 年。
  • McKibben, Bill, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Economies and the Durable Future, New York: Henry Holt & Co, 2007.
  • 罗伯特·赖希 (Robert Reich),《拯救资本主义,造福多数人而非少数人》,纽约:克诺夫出版社,2015 年。
  • Reich, Robert, Saving Capitalism for the Many Not the Few, New York: Knopf, 2015.
  • Reid,TR,《糟糕的局面:全球寻求更简单、更公平、更高效的税收制度》,纽约:企鹅出版社,2017 年。
  • Reid, T. R., A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System, New York: Penguin, 2017.
  • 罗杰斯,梅丽莎·齐格勒,《地方政治与再分配的局限性》,纽约:劳特利奇,2015 年。
  • Rogers, Melissa Ziegler, The Politics of Place and the Limits of Redistribution, New York: Routledge, 2015.
  • Temin, Peter,《消失的中产阶级:二元经济中的偏见与权力》,马萨诸塞州剑桥;伦敦:麻省理工学院出版社,2017 年。
  • Temin, Peter, The Vanishing Middle Class: Prejudice and Power in a Dual Economy, Cambridge, MA; London: MIT Press, 2017.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第六部分 全球问题

Part VI Global Issues

第十九国际政治关系

chapter 19International Political Relations

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-19

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-19

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 解释国家在国际关系中的作用
  • Explain the role of the state in international relations
  • 定义权力并解释为什么没有什么比理解国际关系更基本
  • Define power and explain why nothing is more basic to an understanding of international relations
  • 定义外交政策并讨论政策制定者在制定外交政策时必须注意的五个问题
  • Define foreign policy and discuss five issues that policy makers must heed when forming foreign policy
  • 列举二战以来盛行的三种意识形态
  • List the three ideologies that have been prevalent since World War II
  • 总结美国国会和总统在执行外交政策中的作用
  • Summarize the role of the US Congress and president in conducting foreign policy

国际政治关系自有一套独特的语言。外交官们说话拐弯抹角,掩饰真实感受,除非你懂其中的暗号。在这种语言中,一个词、一个语调,甚至一个眼神,在行家看来,都可能暗示立场的转变。言行不一。这被称为外交,但在外人看来,却常常是空谈。

International political relations have a language all their own. Diplomats talk in convoluted ways that hide their true feelings, unless one knows the code. It is a language in which a single word, an intonation, or a glance can imply, to the cognoscenti, a change in position. Words don’t mean what they seem to say. It’s called diplomacy, but to outsiders it often looks like doubletalk.

唐纳德·特朗普就任总统后,标准的外交辞令终结,取而代之的是一种新型的“特朗普式外交”。特朗普畅所欲言(通常通过推文)。这种外交比标准外交更具挑衅性,也更具挑衅性。这种外交辞令通常通过反映直觉的推文传达,而非隐藏在暗示中的经过深思熟虑的信息。大多数学者认为,推特并非谈论或执行外交政策的正确方式。

When Donald Trump became president, the standard diplomacy talk ended, and a new type of Trump talk diplomacy replaced it. Trump said (often by tweeting) what he thought. It was much more belligerent, and provocative than standard diplomacy. It was often conveyed in tweets that reflected gut reactions, not carefully thought out messages hidden in innuendos. Tweeting was not the way most academics believed foreign policy should be talked about or conducted.

尽管方式和措辞有所不同,特朗普四年执政并未导致美国外交政策的彻底改变。例如,特朗普经常因支持独裁者而受到媒体的谴责。但即使是那些表面上支持民主理想而非美国战略优势的总统,也常常会妥协,支持那些服务于美国利益的独裁者。正如林登·约翰逊总统和F·D·罗斯福总统在被问及是否支持过一位残暴的独裁者时所说:“他或许是个混蛋,但他是我们的混蛋。”

Even though the approach and language differed, Trump’s four years in office did not lead to a total change in US foreign policy. For example, Trump was often condemned by the press for supporting dictators. But even those presidents who made a show of supporting democratic ideals over US strategic advantage, often compromised and supported dictators who served US interest. As both President Lyndon Johnson and F. D. Roosevelt are reported to say when asked about supporting a cruel dictator. “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.”

随着乔·拜登当选,国际政治关系又回到了“外交”的框架下。我认为,大多数国际关系学术专家都对这种回归感到欣慰。但“常态”很可能不再是特朗普上任之前的常态。原因在于科技,它正在改变国际交流的性质,也正在改变外交政策必须应对的问题。这两种变化都对世界政治的稳定和秩序产生影响。

With the election of Joe Biden, international political relations returned to speaking “diplomatise,” and I think it is fair to say that most academic international relations specialists are pleased with the return to the language they know. But it is also likely that “normal” will not be the same normal as it was before Trump. The reason is technology, which is changing the nature of international communications and also changing the problems foreign policy has to deal with. Both changes have implications for the stability and order of the world politic.

我们首先注意到的是,科技正在缩小世界。早期,它涉及交通技术。随着交通技术的进步,世界也缩小了。仅仅一百年前,我们的社区指的是我们的城镇,而今天它指的是整个世界。最近,它涉及到通信技术——它如何个人和国家之间互动频繁。如今,一条推文几秒钟内就能传遍全球,以前所未有的方式将各国联系在一起。其次,需要注意的是,科技正在改变对外关系的性质。如今,哪个国家控制着太空?哪个国家控制着电信设备的生产?哪个国家控制着云计算?甚至,哪个国家控制着生产互联网芯片所需的稀有矿物?这些都是国际关系必须解决的问题。

The first thing we notice is that technology is shrinking the world. Earlier, it involved transportation technology. As transportation technology has improved, the world has shrunk. Whereas only a hundred years ago our community meant our town, today it means the entire world. More recently, it has involved communications technology—the way in which individuals and countries interact. Today, a tweet can go round the world in seconds, tying countries together in ways that they have never been tied before. The second thing to notice is that technology is changing the nature of foreign concerns. Today, which country controls space? Which country controls production of telecommunications equipment? Which country controls the cloud? Or even, which country controls the rare minerals that are needed to produce the chips that power the Internet? These are all questions that international relations must resolve.

国际关系中的国家

State in International Relations

国际政治的目标是理解这个世界共同体,并找到让我们所有人共同生活、避免战争的方法。为此,一个核心的分析单位是国家。“国家”一词有多种不同的含义。在美国,“国家”一词最常用于指代我们国家联盟的五十个成员中的任何一个。但就该词在讨论国际关系时以及我们在本章中的用法而言,国家是指为民事统治和政府而组织起来的政治体。它是一个独立的政治单位,可以与其他类似的单位进行谈判或达成协议。从这个意义上讲,美国符合州的资格,但阿拉巴马州、加利福尼亚州和密歇根州等政治实体则不符合。

The goal of international politics is to understand this world community and to figure out ways for us all to live together, and avoid war. A central unit of analysis for this consideration is the state. The term state has a number of different meanings. In this country, it is most commonly used to refer to any one of the fifty members of our national union. But as the word is used in discussing international relations, and as we are using it in this chapter, a state is a body politic organized for civil rule and government. It is an independent political unit that can carry on negotiations or make agreements with other such units. In this sense, the United States qualifies as a state, but political entities such as Alabama, California, and Michigan do not.

请看第355-356页的世界地图,上面总共有大约十九个州。并非所有州都拥有完全的主权或独立,而且彼此之间也不完全可比。这些州之间在地理特征以及宗教、教育、种族背景、产业、生活水平和政府等文化方面都存在着极大的差异。

Consider the map of the world on pages 355-356, on which you can count a total of about nineteen states. Not all of these states are completely sovereign or independent, nor are they fully comparable. There are extreme variations among them in both physical characteristics and in cultural matters such as religion, education, ethnic background, industry, standards of living, and government.

世界各国。一些较小的国家被遗漏了。看看你能说出多少个。

Nations of the world. A few of the smaller countries have been left out. See how many of them you can name.

例如,从面积来看,它们范围从面积660万平方英里的俄罗斯,到面积不足1平方英里的摩纳哥,再到面积仅有106英亩的小国梵蒂冈;只有八个国家拥有超过100万平方英里的领土。从人口来看,最大的国家是中国(约14亿人)和印度(约14亿人);最小的国家是图瓦卢(1.2万人)和梵蒂冈(不到1000人)。一些国家绝大多数信仰罗马天主教(如西班牙和法国);一些国家几乎完全信奉新教(丹麦和瑞典);其他国家既信奉天主教,又信奉新教(德国);还有一些国家包容多种信仰(美国)。还有一些国家盛行其他宗教,包括伊斯兰教、佛教、犹太教和印度教。人均收入范围从列支敦士登和卡塔尔的每年 100,000 多美元到一些非洲国家每年不到 500 美元不等。

For instance, in area they range from Russia, with an area of 6.6 million square miles, down to Monaco, with less than 1 square mile, and tiny Vatican City, with a mere 106 acres of land; only eight states possess more than a million square miles of territory. In population, the largest states are China (about 1.4 billion people) and India (about 1.4); the smallest are Tuvalu (12,000) and Vatican City (under 1,000). Some states are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic in faith (such as Spain and France); some are almost entirely Protestant (Denmark and Sweden); others are both Catholic and Protestant (Germany); some accommodate a wide variety of faiths (the United States). There are also states in which other religions prevail, including Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, and Hinduism. Income per capita ranges all the way from more than $100,000 per year in Liechtenstein and Qatar to estimates of less than $500 per year in some African countries.

民族国家

Nation-State

在本章中,我们或多或少将“国家”“民族”这两个词用作同义词。然而,严格来说,它们的含义不同,在国际法和外交的精确用语中,只使用“国家”一词;例如,在《联合国宪章》、《国际法院规约》以及一般条约中,情况都是如此。根据《美洲国家组织宪章》(1948年),国家的特征包括:(1)永久人口;(2)明确界定的领土;(3)政府;以及(4)需要具备国际关系能力的主权。“民族”一词最初是指具有相同民族背景的人群,例如德国人或法国人,他们每个人都拥有共同的语言和文化遗产。当一群人与他们不居住的地区共享文化遗产时,该群体被称为“散居者” (diaspora )。(参见方框。)

In this chapter, we use the terms state and nation more or less as synonyms. Strictly, however, they carry different meanings, and in the precise language of international law and diplomacy, only “state” is employed; this is true, for instance, in the Charter of the United Nations, in the Statute of the International Court of Justice, and in treaties generally. The characteristics of a state, according to the Charter of the Organization of American States (1948) are (1) a permanent population, (2) a clearly defined territory, (3) a government, and (4) sovereignty that requires a capacity for international relations. The term nation was originally applied to groups of people with the same ethnic background, such as the Germans or the French, each of whom could point to a common language and a common cultural heritage. When a group of people share a cultural heritage with an area where they do not live, that group is called a diaspora. (See Box.)

现代流行将国家和民族作为同义词的做法的解释在于,几个世纪以来,民族国家——一个往往包括与族群国家基本相同的人民的国家——一直是最突出的现存的国家形式。例如,法国国家主要由具有共同历史和文化背景的法语民族组成。然而,也有一些民族国家——包括瑞士、印度、俄罗斯、伊拉克、西班牙、土耳其和加拿大——没有共同的语言或文化背景。这些语言、文化和种族背景的差异可能会引发问题,正如我们近年来在比利时、斯里兰卡、印度、新兴非洲国家、前苏联加盟共和国、尼泊尔和科索沃所看到的那样。

The explanation of the modern popular practice of using state and nation as synonyms lies in the fact that for some centuries now, the nation-state—a state that has tended to include substantially the same people as the ethnic nation—has been one of the most prominent forms of state in existence. The French state, for instance, is for the most part made up of a French-speaking people with a common historical and cultural background. There are some nation-states, however—including Switzerland, India, Russia, Iraq, Spain, Turkey, and Canada—that do not have a common language or cultural background. These differences in language and in cultural and ethnic background can cause problems, as we have seen in recent years in Belgium, Sri Lanka, India, the emerging African states, the republics of the former Soviet Union, Nepal, and Kosovo.

正如我们在第三章所见,现代民族国家的结构建立在西欧封建制度的废墟之上。在封建领主之间的冲突中,一个地区的某个领主会胜出,最终,大片讲相同方言的地区被统一在一个自称国王的统治者之下。

As we saw in Chapter 3, the structure of the modern nation-state was built on the ruins of feudalism in western Europe. In the conflicts among feudal lords, a certain lord within an area would emerge as victor, and eventually large areas where the people spoke similar dialects were brought together under a ruler who called himself king.

英国是最早的民族国家之一。到十二世纪后期,亨利二世国王的统治范围几乎覆盖了整个国家,以及如今法国的部分地区。法国大部分地区稍后统一;到十五世纪中叶,英国的统治已被赶出欧洲大陆。到法国国王路易十一(1461-1483)统治末期,法国可以自称是一个新的民族国家。其他民族国家逐渐兴起,因此,随着时间的推移,欧洲地图上出现了一个相当大的国家集团——英国、法国、西班牙、丹麦、匈牙利、俄罗斯、波兰、挪威和瑞典。《威斯特伐利亚和约》(1648年)承认教皇和旧神圣罗马帝国的政治权威已不复存在,从而认可了这一新体制。

England was one of the first nation-states, and by the latter part of the twelfth century, the authority of King Henry II extended over almost all of the country, as well as over parts of what is now France. Most of France was unified a little later; by the middle of the fifteenth century, English authority had been forced off the continent. By the end of the reign of the French king Louis XI (1461-1483), France could claim to be a new nation-state. Other nation-states gradually emerged, so that in time the map of Europe showed a substantial group—England, France, Spain, Denmark, Hungary, Russia, Poland, Norway, and Sweden. The Peace of Westphalia (1648) put its stamp of approval on the new system by recognizing that the political authority of the pope and of the old Holy Roman Empire was dead.

民族国家的建立与消亡

The Establishment and Disappearance of Nation-States

自1648年以来,许多新的民族国家如雨后春笋般涌现,而旧民族国家则时有消亡。例如,在19世纪,土耳其政权被驱逐出欧洲大部分地区,巴尔干半岛上出现了新的国家:希腊、保加利亚、塞尔维亚、罗马尼亚、阿尔巴尼亚和黑山(后来并入南斯拉夫)。到20世纪90年代中期,其中一些民族国家再次陷入政治动荡。南斯拉夫和捷克斯洛伐克分裂成多个民族不同的国家,有些是通过战争,有些是通过谈判。

Since 1648, many new nation-states have sprung into being, and from time to time old ones have died out. For example, during the nineteenth century, Turkish authority was expelled from most of Europe, and new states took its place on the Balkan Peninsula: Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Romania, Albania, and Montenegro (later included in Yugoslavia). By the mid-1990s, several of these nation-states were again in political turmoil. Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia broke apart into a number of ethnically different states, some through war and some through negotiation.

19世纪,西半球发生了变化。例如,大约有20个新国家从西班牙和葡萄牙在新大陆的旧领地中分离出来。大约在19世纪中叶,远东的古老国家中国和日本

Change occurred in the Western hemisphere in the 1800s. For example, approximately twenty new states were formed from the old holdings of Spain and Portugal in the New World. About the middle of the nineteenth century, China and Japan, ancient countries of the Far

东方向西方贸易敞开了大门。它们也分别于1842年和1854年被接纳加入民族国家共同体。

East, opened their doors to Western trade. They, too, were admitted into the community of nation-states, in 1842 and 1854, respectively.

第一次世界大战摧毁了奥匈帝国这个古老的多民族国家,并建立了几个新的国家:波兰、捷克斯洛伐克、奥地利、匈牙利、拉脱维亚、立陶宛和爱沙尼亚。它也扩大了罗马尼亚等现有国家的领土。第二次世界大战摧毁了拉脱维亚、立陶宛和爱沙尼亚,但它直接导致了以色列的建立以及朝鲜半岛和德国分裂成新的政治实体。随着苏联解体,拉脱维亚、立陶宛和爱沙尼亚重新宣布独立,东德和西德重新统一。第二次世界大战后,非洲殖民地掀起了民族主义浪潮,20世纪60年代,一些非洲和亚洲国家从英法帝国的统治中独立出来。这些国家融合了不同的民族群体,并在世纪之交经历了动荡,但这种动荡并未完全平息。它们的结构可能还会发生变化。近年来动荡严重的地区包括刚果、索马里、津巴布韦和尼日利亚。第355和356页的地图展示了非洲自二战以来的巨大变化。

World War I tore down the old multinational state of Austria-Hungary and built up several new states: Poland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. It also added to the territory of already existing states such as Romania. World War II snuffed out Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, but it led directly to the establishment of Israel and the divisions of Korea and Germany into new political units. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia reasserted their independence, and East and West Germany were reunited. After World War II, a surge of nationalism took place in the colonial areas of Africa, and in the 1960s a number of African and Asian states emerged from the British and French empires. These countries combined different ethnic groups and experienced turmoil at the turn of the century, not all of which has subsided. Their structure may yet change. Significant areas of turmoil in recent years include the Congo, Somalia, Zimbabwe, and Nigeria. The maps on pages 355 and 356 show how much Africa has changed since World War II.

欧盟的崛起

Rise of the European Union

可见,国家在不断发展演变。这种演变的另一个方面是通过先前存在的国家联盟来构建国家。欧盟(EU)的持续发展就是一个例子。欧盟的起源可以追溯到1951年,当时比利时、西德、卢森堡、法国、意大利和荷兰成立了欧洲煤钢共同体。1952年,同一组国家将该组织扩展为欧洲经济共同体(EEC),各国开始消除彼此之间的贸易壁垒,形成共同市场。1962年,欧洲议会成立,政治联盟由此开始,但该联盟仍然以经济为主。1979年,欧洲议会议员实行直接选举,1992年《马斯特里赫特条约》签署。这使得欧洲经济共同体转变为欧盟,它不仅是一个经济联盟,也是一个政治联盟。欧盟内部各国仍然保持独立,但在国防、司法和内政方面存在着各种形式的合作。制定共同法规和政策的工作已经开始,欧盟法律开始取代、凌驾于各国法律之上,有时甚至与各国法律相冲突。当您在大多数欧洲国家之间旅行时,您就能感受到这些变化的影响——您不再需要经过边境检查。这项欧洲开放边境政策被称为《申根协定》

As you can see, states are constantly evolving. Another aspect of this evolution involves the building up of states through alliances of previously existing states. An example is the ongoing development of the European Union (EU). The beginnings of the EU go back to 1951 when Belgium, West Germany, Luxembourg, France, Italy, and the Netherlands set up the European Coal and Steel Community. In 1952, this same group of countries expanded the organization into the European Economic Community (EEC), and the countries began to remove trade barriers between them, forming a common market. In 1962, a European Parliament was created, and with it the beginnings of a political union, but the union was still primarily economic. In 1979, direct elections for members of the European Parliament were held, and in 1992 the Treaty of Maastricht was signed. This changed the EEC to the EU, which was not only an economic union but also a political union. In the EU the countries were still independent, but there were forms of cooperation in defense, justice, and home affairs. Work toward common regulations and policies began, and EU laws started to replace, override, and sometimes conflict with laws within the countries. You can see the effect of these changes when you travel among most European countries—you no longer have to go through a border check. That European open border policy is called the Schengen Agreement.

1992年,欧盟十二个国家采用了共同货币——欧元,这标志着欧盟朝着加强合作迈出了新的一步。现在,比如说,当你去德国时,你不再使用德国马克作为货币,而是使用欧元。随着这些变化的发生,欧盟成员国数量不断扩大。丹麦、爱尔兰和英国于1973年加入欧盟,随后,希腊、西班牙、葡萄牙、奥地利、芬兰和瑞典也相继加入,直至1995年。2004年,又有十个新成员国加入。自2007年以来,又有三个国家——保加利亚、罗马尼亚和克罗地亚——加入,而一个国家——英国——退出了欧盟。

In 1992, the EU made another move toward greater cooperation when twelve countries adopted a common currency—the euro. Now, when you go to Germany, for example, you no longer use German marks as your currency; you use the euro. As these changes occurred, membership expanded. Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom joined the EU in 1973, followed by Greece, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Finland, and Sweden in the years up until 1995. In 2004, ten new members joined, and since 2007, three more countries—Bulgaria, Romania, and Croatia—joined, and one—Great Britain—withdrew.

然而,所有这些变化都使欧盟距离成为一个国家还很遥远,其整合的尝试也遭遇了失败。例如,丹麦和瑞典等一些国家选择不采用欧元。另一个例子是2003年的《尼斯条约》,该条约制定了管理欧盟运作方式的新规则;它本应成为制定新欧盟宪法的基石。但作为欧盟创始成员国的法国和荷兰的选民并未批准该条约。作为回应,欧洲议会在一项名为《里斯本条约》的条约中纳入了拟议宪法中的许多条款,该条约无需选民批准。《里斯本条约》于2007年签署,并于2009年生效。

All these changes, however, leave the EU a long way from being considered a state, and attempts at consolidation have floundered. For example, a number of countries, such as Denmark and Sweden, chose not to adopt the euro. Another example is the 2003 Treaty of Nice, which laid down new rules governing the way the EU would work; it was to be a stepping-stone to a new EU constitution. But voters in France and the Netherlands, two of the original members, did not ratify the treaty. In response, the European Parliament instituted many of the provisions of the proposed constitution in a treaty called the Treaty of Lisbon, which did not require voter approval. The Treaty of Lisbon was signed in 2007 and went into force in 2009.

截至 2021 年的欧盟。

The European Union as of 2021.

第二次世界大战前的非洲。

Africa before World War II.

另一个例子是前面提到的申根开放边境政策。2015年,大批叙利亚和其他国家的难民涌入欧洲并寻求庇护,一些欧洲国家试图通过关闭边境阻止他们入境,该政策因此受到威胁。允许欧盟国家之间自由旅行的申根协议也面临压力,匈牙利等一些国家开始在边境设置障碍,阻止欧盟邻国自由进入匈牙利。

Another example is the Schengen open border policy mentioned previously. In 2015, it was threatened when large numbers of Syrian and other refugees immigrated to Europe and claimed asylum, and some European countries tried to keep them out of their country by closing their borders. The Schengen Agreement allowing free travel among EU countries came under pressure, and some countries, such as Hungary, began building barriers on their borders, preventing free access into Hungary from its EU neighbors.

近年来,欧盟作为一个国家存在局限性的另外两个例子也发生了。第一个是欧元区危机,当时希腊无力偿还债务,欧洲央行不得不出手救助。作为救助的先决条件,也为了控制债务违约,希腊不得不接受一项紧缩预算,要求工人减薪20%,并大幅增税。这在希腊引发了严重的政治问题。如果希腊是唯一的问题,或许可以控制,但意大利、葡萄牙和西班牙也面临着与希腊类似的财政问题。第二个是2016年6月英国举行的全民公投,投票决定脱离欧盟。(英国退出欧盟被称为“英国脱欧”。)英国于2021年正式脱离欧盟,但脱欧的影响和调整可能会在未来几年显现。

Two other examples of the limitations of the EU as a state occurred in recent years. The first is the Eurozone crisis that occurred when Greece could not pay its debts and the European Central Bank had to help bail Greece out. As a precondition for the bailout and to manage default of its debt, Greece had to accept an austerity budget that required cutting workers’ pay by 20 percent and increasing taxes significantly. This provoked substantial political problems in Greece. If Greece were the only problem, it might be manageable, but Italy, Portugal, and Spain also had fiscal problems that are somewhat similar to Greece’s. The second was a June 2016 referendum in which the United Kingdom voted to leave the EU. (Britain’s exit from the EU is referred to as Brexit.) The United Kingdom officially left the EU in 2021, but the fallout and adjustment from Brexit will likely be occurring in future years.

国家主权

Sovereignty of States

所有国家在法律上都拥有主权,这意味着它们在法律上不从属于任何其他国家。然而,在实践中,它们的主权受到经济和政治现实的限制。例如,一些拉丁美洲国家依赖国际货币基金组织和美国的援助。因此,它们在确定其国际地位时,通常会仔细考虑美国和西方“联盟”可能做出的反应。

All states are legally sovereign, which means they are not legally subordinate to any other state. In practice, however, their sovereignty is limited by economic and political realities. For example, some Latin American countries rely on aid from the International Monetary Fund and the United States. Therefore, they generally consider carefully the probable reaction of the United States and the Western “alliance” in determining their international position.

今天的非洲。

Africa today.

同样,在美国遭遇9/11袭击以及前总统乔治·W·布什的反恐战争“先发制人”政策(即美国声称有权攻击被认为窝藏、协助或教唆恐怖分子的国家)之后,巴基斯坦和叙利亚等国家在制定任何政策之前都需要仔细考虑美国的观点。面对世界上最强大的军事力量的威胁,你很难认为自己拥有完全的主权和独立。

Similarly, after the 9/11 attacks on the United States and former President George W. Bush’s war on terrorism policy of preemption—in which the United States claimed the right to attack a country believed to be harboring, aiding, or abetting terrorists—countries such as Pakistan and Syria needed to carefully consider the United States’ views before undertaking any policy. With the strongest military power in the world threatening you, it is hard to consider yourself fully sovereign and independent.

世界社会的权力

ower in the World Community

理解国际关系,没有什么比理解权力的作用更为重要——权力是指迫使另一方采取违背其明确意愿的行动的能力。各国都有国家目标,而要实现这些目标,就需要权力。诸如“强权政治”、“大国”、“小国”等流行说法,以及“均势”的种种因素都证明了这一角色的重要性。权力涉及多个维度:军事、经济、道德、地理和政治。我们将在下一节中讨论其中的一些维度。

Nothing is more basic to an understanding of international relations than an appreciation of the role of power—the capacity to compel another party to commit an action contrary to its explicitly stated will. Countries have national goals, and to achieve those goals they need power. Current expressions such as “power politics,” the “great powers,” the “small powers,” and the “balance of power” all attest to the importance of that role. Power has many dimensions: military, economic, moral, geographic, and political, and in the next sections we discuss some of them.

国家权力的性质和来源

The Nature and Sources of National Power

归根结底,一个国家的实力在于其拥有的通过影响或控制其他国家的行为来促进其切身利益的手段。虽然军事力量是最显而易见的实力类型,但它并非唯一的实力类型。国家在相互交往中可以利用的主要压力形式包括军事力量、国内外舆论影响力、经济实力和地缘实力。拥有其中任何一项都会增强一个国家的实力,从而提高其实现政治、社会、经济和军事目标的能力。

In the final analysis, the power of a state consists of the means it possesses for promoting its vital interests by influencing or controlling the behavior of other states. Although military force is the most obvious type of power, it is not the only one. The principal forms of pressure available to states in their dealings with each other are military power, power over opinion at home and abroad, economic power, and geographic power. Possession of any of these attributes tends to augment the power of an individual nation and thus increase its ability to realize its political, social, economic, and military goals.

在所有力量来源中,军事力量最为重要。这与个人关系的对应显而易见:如果你能打败所有人,你几乎可以随心所欲地做任何事。当然,如果你想与其他国家保持友好而非恐惧的关系,军事力量也会受到限制,但一个拥有明显军事优势的国家通常能够掌控自己的命运。然而,一个国家很少会成为无可争议的军事强国。相反,军事力量的竞争会逐渐发展,最终导致僵局。

Of all the sources of power, military power is the most important. The parallel to individual relationships is clear: If you can beat up everyone on the block, you are free to do pretty much what you want. There are, of course, limits if you want to maintain friendly, rather than fearful, relations with others, but a nation with clear military superiority can generally control its destiny It is seldom the case, however, that one country emerges as indisputably superior militarily Instead, competing spheres of military power develop, leading to a standoff.

从历史上看,21世纪初的军事实力非同寻常。美国是霸主,拥有几乎无可争辩的军事优势。军事实力赋予其巨大的权力,其意愿比其他主权国家的意愿更为重要。它有权说:“如果你不喜欢,那就硬着头皮——我们想做什么就做什么。” 因此,2003年,当美国认为(错误地)伊拉克拥有大规模杀伤性武器(能够造成重大破坏的生物、化学和核武器)并且希望消除这些武器时,它想动用军事力量。尽管世界上大多数国家认为还不需要动用军事力量,但美国还是这么做了。

In historical terms, the beginning of the twenty-first century was unusual in terms of military power. The United States was a hegemon, a country with almost indisputable military superiority. That military might gave it enormous power, and its desires became much more important than those of other sovereign countries. It had the power to say, “If you don’t like it, tough—we’re going to do what we want.” Thus, in 2003 when the United States wanted to use military force because it believed (incorrectly) that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons capable of causing significant damage) and it wanted to rid Iraq of those weapons, it did so, even though a majority of the world’s countries felt that military force was not yet called for.

要求美国平等履行其职责的呼声并不强烈——以色列拥有大量大规模杀伤性武器,但当阿拉伯国家试图提出这一问题时,美国却置之不理。事实上,大规模杀伤性武器的定义本身就体现了美国的观点。美国对伊拉克使用的巡航导弹和“老大哥”炸弹并未被列为大规模杀伤性武器,但美国指责伊拉克研制的化学和生物制剂却被列为大规模杀伤性武器。

There was no overwhelming cry for the United States to apply its mandate equally—Israel had significant weapons of mass destruction, but when Arab countries tried to raise that issue, they were ignored by the United States. In fact, the very definition of weapons of mass destruction was itself a reflection of the US point of view. Cruise missiles and Big Brother bombs, which the United States used against Iraq, were not classified as weapons of mass destruction, but chemical and biological agents, which the United States accused Iraq of developing, were.

美国(以及其他一些加入美国的国家)攻打伊拉克,却没有发现这些武器的证据。此后,美国并没有因发动不恰当的先发制人战争而受到联合国的谴责。相反,联合国安理会正式承认美国和英国为合法占领国。这就是军事霸权国家的实力。

The United States (and some other countries that joined the United States) attacked Iraq and found no evidence of these weapons. After doing so, the United States was not condemned by the United Nations (UN) for an inappropriate preemptive war. Instead, the UN Security Council officially recognized the United States and Great Britain as legitimate occupying powers. Such is the power of a military hegemonic state.

军事力量的成败不仅仅取决于武器。军事力量也受到社会和文化习俗的限制。在伊拉克战争中,美国本可以使用核武器更快地实现其目标,但由于文化、社会和政治压力而未能这样做。因此,军事力量取决于使用军事力量的意愿,以及承担军事行动所带来损失的意愿。

Military power depends on far more than weapons. Military power is also limited by social and cultural conventions. In its war with Iraq, the United States could have used nuclear weapons to achieve its objective much more quickly, but it was prevented from doing so by cultural, social, and political pressures. Thus, military power depends on the will to use that military power and the will to accept the losses that the use of military action entails.

一个国家动用军事力量的意愿,在一定程度上取决于其接受对其行动批评的能力和意愿。美国表明,它愿意在自己确定的范围内动用军事力量,并且不会接受包括联合国在内的外部力量对其权力的限制,从而改变了国际政治格局。此后,所有国家在与美国的交往中都更加谨慎。因此,这场战争最初扩大了美国的实力。但美国的“单打独斗”态度也在很大程度上损害了世界对美国公平承诺的看法。美国未能实现伊拉克和平,以及美国民众对战争失去普遍支持,削弱了美国的实力。

A country’s will to use military power depends, in part, on its ability and willingness to accept criticism of its actions. By showing that the United States was willing to use its military might on grounds that it determined, and that it would not accept outside limitations on its power, including UN limitations, the United States changed the international political landscape. Thereafter, all countries were a bit more careful in their interactions with the United States. Thus, the war initially extended the power of the United States. But the United States’ “go it alone” attitude also undermined much of the world’s view about the United States’ commitment to fairness. The failure of the United States to bring about peace in Iraq and the loss of popular support for the war by the US population undermined US power.

2008年,随着巴拉克·奥巴马总统当选,对美国的敌意有所减弱。他对军事力量的运用反映了伊拉克战争的教训。在他担任总统期间,很少有国家相信美国会像在伊拉克那样独立自主地单方面采取行动。美国在推翻穆阿迈尔·卡扎菲的利比亚领导人职位过程中所扮演的角色,正是美国介入后伊拉克世界局势的一个例子。尽管美国支持推翻卡扎菲,但它并未派遣军队参与利比亚战争,而是“幕后指挥”,为法国等率先支持利比亚叛军的国家提供空中支援和外交支持。

Some of the hostility toward the United States subsided with the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. His use of military power reflected the lessons from the Iraq War. Under his presidency few countries believed that the United States would act as independently and unilaterally as it did in Iraq. The US role in deposing Muammar Gaddafi as the leader of Libya is an example of US involvement in a post-Iraq world. While the US supported Gaddafi’s overthrow, it did not commit troops to fight in Libya but instead “led from behind,” offering backup air support and diplomatic encouragement to other countries, such as France, that took the lead in support of Libyan rebels.

2016年,美国选举唐纳德·特朗普出任总统,他推行了一项名为“美国优先”的政策。根据这项政策,美国既不会在幕后领导,也不会在前线引领。相反,美国将奉行特朗普认为符合美国利益的自身政策,几乎或完全不顾及其他国家。例如,尽管所有其他国家都希望继续遵守伊朗核协议,但他却退出了该协议。他贬低北约,暗示他可能希望美国退出该组织。如果其他国家也想效仿,那也没问题,但他们必须认识到,美国将主导决策,而不是与其盟友共同做出决定。实际上,特朗普执政时期的美国立场并非如此赤裸裸的单边主义,但比布什、奥巴马或拜登执政时期的美国立场要强得多。

In 2016, the United States elected Donald Trump as president, who implemented a policy he called America First. Under this policy the United States would not lead from behind, nor would it lead from the front. Instead, it would follow its own policy that Trump believed was in the interests of the United States, with little to no concern for other countries. For example, he withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal even though all other countries wanted to continue with it. He disparaged NATO, suggesting he might want to withdraw the United States from the organization. If other countries wanted to follow suit, that would be fine, but they would have to recognize that the United States would be driving the decision making, rather than making the decisions collectively with its allies. In practice, the United States' positions under Trump were not so starkly unilateralist, but they were far more so than under Bush, Obama, or Biden.

社会和文化因素的重要性意味着政府结构在决定一个国家的军事实力方面发挥着重要作用。在西方自由民主国家,新闻界和个人享有广泛的自由,舆论在决定政府政策方面发挥着重要作用。在专制政府的政策中,舆论的作用较小。这类政府可以通过严格控制媒体来部分塑造舆论。如果在这种控制下,异议仍然存在,他们可以利用秘密警察或其他镇压组织来搜寻、杀害或监禁其领导人,在某些情况下,甚至整群异议者。萨达姆·侯赛因在伊拉克无情地运用了这种权力,巴沙尔·阿萨德在叙利亚也无情地运用了这种权力。伊拉克新闻部的简报在美国入侵的最后几天展现了伊拉克对新闻界的控制有多么强大。当美国坦克驶过巴格达市时,新闻部长正在向记者介绍伊拉克如何赢得战争并击退美国人。

The importance of social and cultural factors means that the structure of government plays a role in determining the military power of a country. In Western liberal democracies, in which the press and individuals enjoy extensive freedoms, public opinion plays a significant role in determining governmental policy. Public opinion plays less of a role in the policies of autocratic governments. Such governments can partially shape public opinion through tight control of the media. If, in spite of such control, dissent develops, they can use secret police or other repressive organizations to ferret out and kill or imprison its leaders and, in some cases, whole groups of dissenters. Saddam Hussein used this power ruthlessly in Iraq, and Bashar al-Assad used it ruthlessly in Syria. Just how strong the control of the press was in Iraq is shown by the briefings of the Iraqi Ministry of Information during the final days of the US invasion. As US tanks were driving through the city of Baghdad, the minister of information was briefing reporters on how Iraq was winning the war and driving back the Americans.

我们应该指出,虽然民主国家对舆论的控制力较弱,但它们仍然可以影响舆论,在战争时期,它们直接控制记者接触到的新闻流。在2003年的伊拉克战争中,新闻工作者被“嵌入”军队,从而能够更近距离地观察战事。批评人士指出,嵌入军队是塑造记者观点的一种方式,因为批评保护你的人很难。独裁国家和民主国家对新闻界的控制只是程度上的差异。在独裁国家,对新闻界的控制往往是直接的;而在民主国家,控制通常是间接的,政府依靠对报道进行适当的“歪曲”​​。

We should point out that while democracies have less control over public opinion, they can still influence it, and during times of war they directly control the flow of news that reaches reporters. In the 2003 Iraq War, members of the press were “embedded” within military units, giving them a much closer look at the war. Critics pointed out that embedding was a way of shaping the reporter’s view, because it is difficult to criticize individuals who are protecting you. The difference in control of the press in an autocracy and in a democracy is one of degree. In an autocracy, the control over the press is often direct; in a democracy, it is generally indirect, with the government relying on creating an appropriate “spin” on the reporting.

专制国家的政府或许能够塑造国内舆论,但却无法直接控制国外舆论。无论是专制政府还是民主政府,在试图影响国外舆论时,都可能诉诸宣传。虽然目前没有非常可靠的方法来衡量宣传的效果,但可以肯定的是,所有强国都不会开展大规模的宣传运动,除非这些运动被认为有效——无论是在增强国内士气、赢得国外支持方面,还是在削弱潜在敌人的士气方面。

Although the government of an autocratic state may be able to shape public opinion at home, it has no direct control over foreign opinion. In their attempts to influence opinion abroad, both autocratic and democratic governments are likely to resort to propaganda, and though there are no very dependable ways of measuring its results, it is safe to assume that the large-scale propaganda campaigns conducted by all strong nations would not be undertaken unless they were thought to be effective, either in strengthening home morale and winning support abroad or else in undermining the morale of potential enemies.

美国霸权的终结与中国军事力量的崛起

The End of US Hegemony and the Rise of Chinese Military Power

二战后,美国赢得了大多数西方国家的信任和尊重。这种信任并非源于其强大的宣传和军事实力(尽管美国拥有强大的军事实力),而是源于大多数国家对美国在二战中所扮演角色的认可。这种信任在20世纪80年代逐渐减弱,其影响源于诸如美国在越南战争中扮演的角色以及国内纷争等问题。随着苏联解体,人们对美国军事力量的尊重重燃,但人们对美国将利用军事力量造福世界而非自身利益的信心却荡然无存。2003年的伊拉克战争进一步加深了这种信心,而美国从阿富汗撤军则进一步削弱了这种信心。如今,在许多人看来,美国只不过是一个追求自身利益的国家。

Following World War II, the United States enjoyed the confidence and respect of most other Western nations. This confidence reflected not so much propaganda and military might (although the United States had a good deal of the latter) but the appreciation of most countries for the US role in the war. That confidence gradually eroded through the 1980s. This erosion reflected the impact of issues such as our role in Vietnam and dissension at home. With the downfall of the Soviet Union, respect for US military power returned, but the confidence that the United States would use that military might for the benefit of the world, and not for itself, did not. The 2003 Iraq War reinforced that reduced confidence, and the withdrawl from its war in Afghanistan reduced it even more.. Today the United States is seen by many as just another country pursuing its own interests.

近年来,中国经济和军事持续增长。与此同时,中国也在太平洋地区施加军事影响力,形成一股与美国抗衡的力量。一个备受争议的问题是南海的控制权问题,这片水域被菲律宾、越南、中国等国包围。中国声称南海大部分区域为其领土。其他国家,例如日本和菲律宾,也与美国有国防条约,并与之有外交关系。早些年,中国军事力量尚不强大,不愿强行宣示主权,因此存在僵局使得相互冲突的主权声索得以存在。随着中国军事实力的增强,它更愿意宣示自己的主权,并无视其他国家的主权声索。为了强化其立场,中国一直在占领小型无人居住的环礁,并建造军事基地和飞机跑道,以此来展示其对南海的控制。实际上,中国一直在通过造岛来扩大其影响力。这些活动引起了邻国的警惕,并正在向美国施压,要求其采取行动。作为回应,美国派遣海军舰艇前往该地区,以展示其开放进入该水域的权利。中国认为美国的此类行动是对中国事务的不可接受的干涉。

In recent years, China has been growing economically and expanding militarily As it does so, it is exerting its military influence in the Pacific, creating a counter power to the United States. One contentious problem is over control of the South China Sea, a body of water surrounded by the Philippines, Vietnam, and China among other countries. China claims much of the sea as its territory. Other countries, such as Japan and the Philippines, with whom the United States identifies and has defense treaties, do as well. In earlier years, when China did not have a strong military presence, it was unwilling to exert its claims forcefully, and there was a standoff that allowed the conflicting claims to exist. As China has become stronger militarily, it has been more willing to exert its claims, and to disregard the other countries’ claims. To strengthen its stance, it has been taking small uninhabited atolls and building military bases and landing strips as a way of demonstrating its control of the South China Sea. In essence, China has been building islands to expand its reach. These activities are viewed with alarm by the neighboring countries, and they are pressuring the United States to do something about it. In response, the United States sent naval ships to the area to demonstrate its right to open access to those waters. China sees such actions by the United States as an unacceptable intrusion into its affairs.

其他能源

Other Sources of Power

经济实力在国际关系中的作用已屡见不鲜。在19世纪初对抗拿破仑·波拿巴的斗争中,英国的经济实力不仅使其能够扩张自身的军事力量,还为其盟友提供资金和物资。一个多世纪后,它使美国在两次世界大战中都做到了这一点;二战后,它使美国为重建曾被纳粹占领、后来又感受到前苏联军事力量扩张威胁的西欧国家的经济和军事力量做出了重要贡献。

The usefulness of economic power in international relations has often been demonstrated. During the struggle against Napoleon Bonaparte in the early 1800s, Great Britain’s economic power enabled it not only to expand its own military forces but also to provide money and supplies for its allies. More than a century later, it enabled the United States to do likewise in both world wars; after World War II, it enabled the United States to make an important contribution to rebuilding the economies and the military forces of the countries of western Europe that had been overrun by the Nazis and that later felt threatened by the expanded military power of the former Soviet Union.

虽然一个国家的力量来源多种多样,但其中一些比其他来源更为根本。一个国家要想拥有强大的国力,其规模和人口规模都至关重要。规模是俄罗斯和美国都享有的优势,而这种规模也解释了它们的重要性。另一方面,日本虽然地域狭小,但却是一个经济大国。工业实力是另一个重要的实力来源,因为一个国家必须在其工厂生产现代战争所需的装备,包括坦克、舰船、飞机、导弹和核弹。美国强大的工业产出是这场权力博弈中的一大优势,而日本的实力则建立在其工业产出之上。

Though the sources of a nations power are varied, some of them are more basic than others. For a state to generate great national strength, it helps to be large, both in area and in population. Size is an advantage enjoyed by both Russia and the United States, and that size helps explain their importance. On the other hand, Japan is geographically small, but it is a major economic power. Industrial might is another vital source of power, for in its factories a country must produce the equipment for modern warfare, including tanks, ships, planes, missiles, and nuclear bombs. The high industrial output of the United States is a great asset in the power game, while Japans strength is based on its industrial output.

经济实力的另一个主要来源是获得充足的原材料供应,因为没有这些,任何国家都无法发展和维持庞大而高效的工业综合体。另一个仍然是影响国力的因素是地理位置。地理位置除其他因素外,还会影响原材料的获取以及一个国家遭受军事攻击的程度。地理位置是美国实力的一个要素。我们与任何其他大国都被海洋隔开,虽然核导弹可以在几分钟内穿越海洋,但正如我们所指出的,使用此类武器具有强大的威慑力。同时,海洋仍然保护着我们免受使用常规武器的大军的攻击。

Another major source of economic power is dependable access to adequate supplies of raw materials, because without these no nation can develop and maintain a large and efficient industrial complex. Yet another condition that is still a factor in national power is geographic location. This can, among other things, affect both access to raw materials and the degree to which a nation is vulnerable to a military attack. Geographic location is one element of US strength. We are separated by oceans from any other major power, and though these can be crossed in a few minutes by nuclear missiles, there are, as we have pointed out, strong deterrents to the use of such weapons. Meanwhile, the oceans still protect us against attack by great armies using conventional weapons.

然而,鉴于国土面积、发达的工业以及充足的原材料供应,一个国家实力最重要的源泉或许在于其人民的素质。在人民中,应该有数量可观的优秀科学家、艺术家、教育家、商人、军事领袖、政治家,以及众多各行各业的高技能工人。在民主国家,如果一个民族拥有这种素质,那么它在与其他国家交往时对国家实力贡献最大的或许就是强烈的爱国主义和忠诚,这种素质使他们愿意支持政府制定任何他们认为合理的政策。但在与外国交往时,民主国家的政府可能会面临国内的难题。谈判不可能由全体人民共同进行;谈判必须由政府中代表他们的人来执行。

However, given size, a well-developed industry, and dependable access to adequate raw materials, probably the most important source of a nation’s power is the characteristics of its people. Among the people there should be a substantial number of able scientists, artists, educators, businesspeople, military leaders, politicians, and many highly skilled workers of all types. In a democracy, perhaps the characteristic of a people that, if they have it, contributes most to the power of the nation in dealing with others is a strong sense of patriotism and loyalty that makes them willing to support their government in any policy they consider reasonable. But in dealing with foreign countries, the governments of democracies can face difficult problems at home. Negotiations cannot be carried on by all the people; they must be conducted by those who represent them in government.

如果代表国家的人们所推行的政策得到绝大多数民众的认同,这不会造成太大问题。然而,经常会出现大量持不同意见的少数派,甚至公众对政府政策的合理性的看法也几乎不一。当这些意见分歧涉及到民众强烈情绪的问题时,政府制定清晰的外交政策并与其他国家达成令人满意的协议的能力可能会受到削弱。

This creates no great problem if those who represent the country are following policies with which the vast majority of the people agree. Frequently, however, there are large dissenting minorities, or there may even be an almost equal division of public opinion on the wisdom of government policies. When such differences of opinion concern issues about which people have strong emotions, the power of a government to formulate clear foreign policies and to make satisfactory agreements with other countries is likely to be impaired.

维护安全

vMaintaining Security

在一个由主权民族国家组成的国际社会中,一个国家可以通过多种方式在不发动战争的情况下实现自身安全,免受攻击,同时实现其他一些国际目标。如果它是一个大国,比如美国,拥有充足的资源和发达的工业,它可能会尝试单方面(独立或片面地)增强其军事力量,以至于没有其他国家或可能的国家联盟敢于挑战它。在当今世界,这对任何国家来说都是一项艰巨的任务。首先,这意味着要将大量改善人民生活条件和解决各种其他社会问题所需的资源转用于军事用途。其次,其他国家担心自身安全和控制自身事务的能力,可能会结成联盟来保护其利益。因此,在2003年伊拉克战争爆发后——这场战争遭到了大多数美国盟友的强烈反对——一些欧洲国家开始重新考虑与美国的联盟,并开始探索建立一个独立于美国的欧洲防务组织。

In a world community of sovereign nation-states, there are several ways in which a state could conceivably attempt to achieve security from attack without war and at the same time gain some of its other international objectives. If it is a large state, such as the United States, with adequate resources and industrial development, it might attempt to make a unilateral—independent or one-sided—buildup of its military power to such a degree that no other state or probable combination of states would dare to challenge it. In the contemporary world, this would be a difficult achievement for any nation. First, it would mean diverting to military uses vast amounts of resources needed to improve the living conditions of its people and needed to meet various other social problems. Second, other nations, fearful for their safety and their power to control their own affairs, might form alliances to protect their interests. Thus, after the start of the 2003 Iraq War—a war that a majority of US allies strongly opposed—a number of European nations began reconsidering their alliance with the United States and began exploring the creation of a separate European defense organization that would operate independently of the United States.

解决安全问题的另一种可行方案,即由一群合作的国家尝试实施,即把世界各国组织成一个世界政府体系,或者有时被称为超国家治理体系。为了获得更大的成功,这样的体系必须涵盖世界大多数国家,尤其是那些较强大的国家。它必须是一种联邦或超级国家,设有法院解决国家间争端,并拥有能够迫使不服从的国家接受法院裁决的军事机构。在可预见的未来建立这样一个体系的可能性很小,因为大多数权力掌握在几个非常大的国家手中,而这些国家中的许多利益似乎相互对立。

Another conceivable approach to the problem of security, one that a group of cooperating states could attempt to implement, would be to organize all the states of the world into a system of world government, or what is sometimes called a system of supranational governance. To have much chance of success, such a system would have to include most of the states of the world, especially the more powerful ones. It would have to be a kind of federation or superstate, with courts for settling disputes between nations and with a military establishment capable of forcing a recalcitrant nation to accept court decisions. The chances of establishing such a system in the foreseeable future are small because most power is in the hands of several very large countries, many of whose interests appear to be in opposition.

此外,似乎很少有国家愿意放弃其主权或采取任何外交政策的权利。我们将在第22章讨论的联合国,或许可以被视为迈向世界政府体系的第一步,但实际上它几乎没有能力保护其成员国或防止战争。然而,它确实提供了许多有益的国际服务。

Furthermore, few nations seem willing to give up much of their sovereignty or their right to adopt any foreign policies they please. The United Nations, which we discuss in Chapter 22, may be regarded as a first step toward a system of world government, but actually it has very little power to protect its members or to prevent war. It does, however, perform many useful international services.

防止或至少无限期推迟世界上最强大国家之间灾难性战争的最常见方法是发展并在可能的情况下维持稳定的均势。“均势”一词指的是一种权力的均衡或划分,暂时没有任何国家愿意打破这种均衡。一个国家的权力阻止另一个国家动用其权力。在维也纳会议(1815年)之后的一个世纪里,一种相当有效的权力平衡得以维持。尽管那个时代确实经历了一些权力调整,甚至爆发了几场规模相当大的战争,但直到第一次世界大战之前,没有任何国家试图从根本上挑战现有的平衡。第一次世界大战后,美国成为主要强国,其权力在第二次世界大战期间和战后显著增强。第二次世界大战后,权力平衡存在于西方阵营(美国、西欧、日本及其盟友)和东方阵营(苏联、东欧及其盟友)之间。这种平衡在结构上体现在各国加入正式的联盟组织。

The most common way of preventing or at least indefinitely delaying a disastrous war between the world’s most powerful nations is to develop and, if possible, maintain a stable balance of power. The term balance of power means an equilibrium or division of power that for the time being no nation is willing to disturb. The power of one nation prevents the other nation from using its power. During the century that followed the Congress of Vienna (1815), a fairly effective power balance was maintained, for though that era did witness some adjustments of power and even several sizable wars, until World War I no state attempted to radically challenge the existing balance. After World War I, the United States became a major power, and its power significantly increased during and right after World War II. After World War II, the balance of power was between the Western bloc (the United States, western Europe, Japan, and their allies) and the Eastern bloc (the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, and their allies). This balance was structurally indicated by their membership in formal alliance organizations.

20世纪90年代苏联解体后,这种力量平衡开始失衡。美国是世界上最强大的军事力量,远超其他任何国家。鉴于这一现实,人们开始讨论建立一种新的世界秩序——一种美国在处理内外事务时遵循“正义”而非“强权”原则的国际秩序——来取代力量平衡。

In the 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union, that balance of power became unbalanced. The United States was the worlds strongest military power, much stronger than any other country. Given that reality, there was talk of a new world order—an international order in which the United States would follow the dictum of right rather than might in its conduct of external and internal affairs—replacing the balance of power.

随着社会科学家讨论新世界秩序的出现,一种适应这一变化秩序的政治理论应运而生。它被称为复杂相互依存理论,认为最大国家的权力受到各种相互依存关系的限制。这一新理论与现实主义理论形成对比,现实主义理论认为,两个竞争国家的力量平衡是维持和平的必要条件。随着世界逐渐走向单极体系,美国成为主要超级大国,缺乏同样强大的制衡力量,复杂相互依存理论逐渐被接受。

As social scientists discussed the emergence of a new world order, a political theory emerged to fit the changing order. It is called the theory of complex interdependence, in which the largest nation’s powers are limited by a variety of interdependencies. This new theory is in contrast to the realist theory, in which a balance of power with two competing nations is necessary to maintain the peace. As the world gradually moved toward a unipolar system, with the United States as the primary superpower, without an equally strong offsetting balancing force, the theory of complex interdependence gained acceptance.

新兴的国际现实使一些国际组织的宗旨受到质疑。北大西洋公约组织(NATO)就是一个例子,该组织负责西方的集体防御和保护。2021年,北约拥有30个成员国。

The emerging international realities brought into question the purpose of some international organizations. One example was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the organization responsible for the collective defense and protection of the West. In 2021, NATO had thirty member states.

随着苏联解体,北约在20世纪90年代失去了其原有的宗旨。但是,与许多失去宗旨的组织一样,北约继续存在,并寻找新的目标。由于2003年伊拉克战争——这场战争遭到许多北约国家的反对——北约缩减了其使命,并开始将自己重塑为“一个多功能的军事和政治工具箱,可供北约国家临时集群在短时间内使用”。这一变化意味着,即使所有北约国家不同意,北约也可以派遣其北约部队参与维和活动。

With the breakup of the Soviet Union, in the 1990s NATO lost much of its former purpose. But, like many organizations that have lost their purpose, NATO continued to exist, searching for a new purpose. Because of the 2003 war in Iraq, a war that many NATO countries opposed, NATO scaled back its mission and began refashioning itself as an “all-purpose military and political toolbox that can be tapped at short notice by ad hoc clusters of NATO countries.” This change means that NATO can commit its NATO forces to peacekeeping activities even if all NATO countries do not agree.

图 19.1黑山加入北约之前的成员国国旗。(图片来源:© Shutterstock)

Figure 19.1Flags of NATO member states before Montenegro joined. (Source: © Shutterstock)

北约在寻求新角色的过程中不断扩张,于1997年吸纳了一些此前旨在制衡的国家,如波兰、匈牙利和捷克共和国。其他国家也纷纷申请加入,北约甚至与俄罗斯达成了合作协议。2002年的《柏林+协议》也进一步增强了欧盟的军事能力;如果北约拒绝干预危机,欧盟可以获得北约的资源。欧盟军事角色的扩张使人们对北约的未来产生了疑问。然而,当俄罗斯支持乌克兰叛军,并在许多报道中积极支持他们时,北约成员国达成了更多共识。2014年,北约单方面终止了与俄罗斯的合作,并将北约军队调往乌克兰接壤国家,使北约更接近其初衷——平衡俄罗斯的实力和侵略行为。作为回应,俄罗斯于2022年将军队调至乌克兰边境,使该地区成为北约与俄罗斯之间可能发生战争的火药桶。2022年,俄罗斯入侵乌克兰,这个火药桶爆炸了。俄罗斯入侵乌克兰的部分理由是为了阻止乌克兰未来加入北约。

As NATO searched for a new role, it expanded, adding some states that it had previously been established to counterbalance, such as Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1997. Other states were also asking for membership, and NATO even worked out a cooperative agreement with Russia. The Berlin Plus Agreement in 2002 also saw the European Union further enhance its military capabilities; it gave the EU access to NATO resources should the latter decline to intervene in a crisis. The expansion of the EU’s military role posed questions about NATO’s future. However, when Russia supported Ukrainian rebels and, in many reports, was taking an active role in supporting them, NATO members found more consensus. In 2014 NATO unilaterally ended its cooperation with Russia, and moved NATO troops to countries bordering the Ukraine, moving NATO closer to its original intent—as a balance for Russian power and aggression. In response, Russia moved troops to the Ukranian border in 2022, making the area a powderkeg for possible fighting between NATO and Russia. That powder keg exploded in 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Part of the rationale Russia gave for that invasion was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO in the future.

随着中国崛起为一个抵消型超级大国,复杂相互依存理论逐渐失宠,均势观点重新流行起来。政治学家们提出的问题是,哪些相互依存关系限制了美国的实力运用。

The theory of complex interdependencies lost some favor as China has emerged as an offsetting superpower, and the balance of power view regained currency. The question political scientists asked was what interdependencies were limiting the United States’ use of power.

当力量平衡时,每个国家都会限制自己的行动,以免打破这种平衡。在新的世界秩序中,可以预见的是,每个国家都会根据“什么是正确的”来限制自己的行动。“什么是正确的”是如何确定的呢?它由主要大国决定。为了使新的世界秩序发挥作用,主要大国必须以大多数人认为正确的方式来解释“什么是正确的”,而不考虑各国各自的利益。让新的世界秩序发挥作用是一项艰巨的任务,我们将在第22章进一步讨论这个问题。

When there is a balance of power each country limits its actions for fear of upsetting that balance. In the new world order it is foreseen that each country will limit its actions according to “what is right.” How is “what is right” determined? It is determined by the major power who, for the new world order to work, must interpret “what is right” in a way that seems right to most people regardless of what is in the countries’ individual interests. Making the new world order work is a tall order, an issue that we discuss further in Chapter 22.

外交政策

Foreign Policies

影响各国国家安全或总体福祉的国家间关系是国际关系的核心。一个国家的外交政策是其为实现其国际目标而采取的行动方针。通常,一个国家的首要目标是增进自身安全和总体经济福祉。然而,有时一项外交政策可能会促进某些政治上强大的压力集团的利益,而非国家整体的利益。在这种情况下,支持该政策的人通常会试图让大多数人相信,该政策有利于整个国家。

Relationships between states that affect the national security or general welfare of each are the core of international relations. The foreign policies of a nation are the courses of action a nation uses to achieve its international objectives. As a rule, the nations primary purposes are to increase its own security and its own general economic welfare. Sometimes, however, a foreign policy may further the interests of some politically powerful pressure group rather than those of the nation as a whole. When this is so, those who support it usually attempt to convince the majority that it benefits the entire nation.

一般来说,一个国家的外交政策旨在服务于国家利益,因为这些利益是由公众或直接掌权者构想的。安全与繁荣始终是主要目标;其他目标可能包括传播意识形态以及提升国家实力和声望。遗憾的是,没有简单的公式能够保证外交政策决策始终正确。因此,争论在所难免。

Generally speaking, the foreign policies of a state are designed to serve the national interests as these are conceived by the public or by those in direct control. Security and prosperity are always major objectives; other objectives may include the spread of an ideology and the expansion of national power and prestige. Unfortunately, there is no simple formula guaranteeing that the right foreign policy decisions will always be made. Debate is, therefore, inevitable.

外交政策问题的一个例子是最近与伊朗、美国和其他西方国家达成的协议。在关于解除对伊朗经济制裁以换取伊朗对其核活动进行限制的谈判中,美国与伊朗达成了一项协议,但该协议遭到其两个最强大的盟友——沙特阿拉伯和以色列的强烈反对。他们担心解除制裁会使伊朗在中东地区扮演更强大的角色,并且伊朗不会停止其核计划。美国认为,将伊朗纳入全球经济将加强伊朗的自由主义改革,降低其研制核弹的可能性,从而增强其在地区层面的影响力。双方都认为,存在未公开的双边附带协议,而他们所谓的盟友正在损害他们的利益。肥皂剧的阴谋与外交政策的阴谋相比显得微不足道。随着特朗普总统的当选,伊朗协议变得更加扑朔迷离;他单方面宣布美国退出该协议,并重新对伊朗实施制裁,而这正是以色列和沙特阿拉伯希望他做的。拜登当选总统后,开始致力于恢复与伊朗的核协议,但截至2022年,双方是否能达成协议仍不明朗。

An example of the problems of foreign policy involves the recent agreement with Iran, the United States and other Western nations. In negotiations about removing economic sanctions on Iran in return for Iran submitting to limitations on its nuclear activities, the United States arrived at an agreement with Iran that was strongly opposed by two of its strongest allies— Saudi Arabia and Israel. They were worried that the lifting of sanctions would make Iran a stronger player in the Middle East and that Iran would not stop its nuclear program. The United States argued that bringing Iran into the global economy would strengthen liberal reforms in Iran and make it less likely to develop nuclear bombs, thereby giving it even more power regionally. Both sides believed that unreported bilateral side agreements were being made, and that their so-called allies were working against their interests. The intrigue of soap operas pales in comparison with the intrigue of foreign policy. The Iran deal became even more intriguing with the election of President Trump; he unilaterally pulled the United States from the agreement and re-imposed sanctions on Iran, precisely what Israel and Saudi Arabia wanted him to do. When Biden won the presidency, he started working to reinstate the nuclear agreement with Iran, but as of 2022, it was unclear whether both sides could come to an agreement.

地理与外交政策

Geography and Foreign Policy

正如我们指出的,在决定外交政策的诸多因素中,一个国家的地理位置尤为突出。为了促进国家的安全和繁荣,政策制定者必须关注以下事项:

Conspicuous among the facts and forces that act as determinants of foreign policy is, as we have pointed out, the geographic position of a nation. For the promotion of the country’s security and prosperity, policy makers must give heed to matters such as the following:

  • 国家边界的可防御性
  • The defensibility of the state’s boundaries
  • 距离对远程导弹进攻和防御能力的影响
  • The effects of distance on its powers of offense and defense by means of long-range missiles
  • 可用于贸易的港口和海军基地
  • The availability of ports for useful trade and for naval bases
  • 邻国的态度及其规模和实力
  • The attitudes of neighboring states and their size and power
  • 该州自身的规模和自然资源
  • The state’s own size and natural resources

如果一个国家对自己的地理命运感到满意,它就会努力保护自己拥有的一切;如果它不满意,那么如果可能的话,它就会调整政策,消除所谓的障碍,积极地、甚至积极地维护自己的利益,以便从其他国家获得它认为需要的东西。

If a state is satisfied with its geographic lot in life, it can direct its efforts toward protecting what it has; if it is dissatisfied, it will, if possible, maneuver its policies toward the elimination of its alleged handicaps, asserting itself dynamically, perhaps even aggressively, in order to get from others what it believes it needs.

“地缘政治”一词指的是外交政策制定者试图考量的地理与安全之间的关系。尼古拉斯·斯皮克曼认为,地缘政治是“一个国家根据其地理因素制定安全政策”。没有哪个国家像20世纪30年代的德国那样认真地研究地缘政治。在纳粹统治下,德国信奉早期地缘政治学家的理论,并制定了一套“科学的”扩张政策,旨在确保德国在未来无限期的霸主地位,而这一切都是以牺牲纳粹所谓的“腐朽的”邻国为代价的。

The term geopolitics refers to the relation between geography and security that foreign policy makers attempt to take into account. According to Nicholas Spykman, geopolitics is “the planning of the security policy of a country in terms of its geographic factors.” No nation pursued the subject as seriously as did Germany in the 1930s. Under the Nazis, Germany embraced the theories of earlier geopoliticians, and it worked out a “scientific” policy of expansion calculated to secure Germany’s position as a master power for an indefinite future, all at the expense of what the Nazi’s called “decadent” neighbors.

大多数国家虽然没有构建类似纳粹那样复杂的地缘政治理论,但其外交政策中却展现了其地理野心。几个世纪以来,俄罗斯一直在寻求优质的暖水港;它一直想控制达达尼尔海峡,并试图在其西部边境获得缓冲区,以弥补其缺乏可防御边界的缺陷。它在20世纪70年代和80年代在伊朗和阿富汗的活动反映了这种愿望。2014年从乌克兰吞并克里米亚是另一个例子。

Without constructing a complicated theory of geopolitics comparable to that of the Nazis, most states nevertheless have exhibited their geographic aspirations in their foreign policies. Russia for centuries has sought good warm-water ports; it has wanted control over the Dardanelles, and it has tried to get buffer territory on its western frontier to make up for its lack of defensible boundaries there. Its activities in Iran and Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s reflected that desire. Its annexation in 2014 of Crimea from Ukraine is another example.

此类地缘政治考量引发了多场战争。例如,法国长期以来认为,其地理位置决定其必须在莱茵河沿岸寻求边界,以削弱其危险邻国德国的力量,因为德国曾多次入侵法国领土。在远东,二战前,日本试图通过吞并朝鲜半岛、满洲、台湾和太平洋上的许多岛屿,并控制中国来增强其安全地位。伊拉克1990年入侵科威特,部分原因是为了控制科威特的两个岛屿,从而更好地控制从伊拉克巴士拉港出发的航道。一些观察人士认为,2003年的伊拉克战争是美国试图在中东建立强大的军事存在,以保护其石油利益并为以色列提供更好的保护。

Such geopolitical concerns have contributed to many wars. For example, France long felt that its geographic position required it to seek a frontier on the Rhine River in order to undermine the strength of its dangerous neighbor, Germany, which had several times invaded France’s territory. In the Far East, Japan attempted before World War II to add to the security of its position by absorbing Korea, Manchuria, Taiwan, and many islands of the Pacific and by controlling China. Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait was in part an attempt to gain control of two of Kuwait’s islands, which would give it better control of the shipping lanes out of the Iraqi port of Basra, and the 2003 Iraq War was seen by some observers as an attempt by the United States to gain a strong military presence in the Middle East so that it could protect its oil interests and provide better protection for Israel.

价值观、意识形态和外交政策

Values, Ideologies, and Foreign Policy

在讨论外交政策时,人们经常听到的一个词是意识形态——一种根深蒂固的、关于正确政府形态的观点。自第一次世界大战以来,三种盛行的意识形态是法西斯主义意识形态、民主资本主义意识形态和共产主义意识形态。

A term that one often hears when discussing foreign policy is ideology—a deeply held vision of what the correct form of government should be. Since World War I, the three ideologies that have been prevalent are the fascist ideology, the democratic capitalist ideology, and the communist ideology.

法西斯主义意识形态法西斯主义意识形态认为,一个国家会自然而然地兴起一位领袖,告诉人民他们想要什么。它赋予一小群领导人巨大的权力,这意味着它往往会忽视个人和少数群体的权利。在法西斯主义意识形态下,领导者会让人民、国家及其文化变得伟大。随着希特勒在德国和墨索里尼在意大利的失败,法西斯主义作为一种意识形态已经衰落,但你仍然可以在美国以及一些社会动荡严重的国家的小纳粹党中看到对法西斯主义意识形态的支持。

Fascist Ideology The fascist ideology holds that a natural leader will arise in a country to tell the people what they want. It gives enormous power to a small group of leaders, which means that it tends to overlook the rights of individuals and minority groups. Under fascist ideology, the leader will make the people, the nation, and their culture great. With the defeat of Hitler in Germany and Mussolini in Italy in World War II, fascism has declined as an ideology, but you can still see support for fascist ideology in the small Nazi Party in the United States and in some countries where significant social turmoil exists.

民主资本主义意识形态。当今世界占主导地位的意识形态是民主资本主义意识形态。这种意识形态认为,人民通过民主选举政府来制定社会决策。人民的意志占据主导地位,并受制于某些不可剥夺的个人权利,例如财产权和言论自由权。选举的运作和不可剥夺的权利这些权利都明确规定在正式或非正式的宪法中,而宪法是国家法律的核心。在民主资本主义意识形态中,经济是一个以竞争为主导的自由市场,鼓励创新,所有领导人都应遵守法律。因此,民主资本主义应该将法治与民治相结合。

Democratic Capitalist Ideology The dominant ideology today throughout the world is the democratic capitalist ideology It is an ideology that sees the people as making society’s decisions through democratic elections of their government. The will of the people is dominant, and subject to the preservation of certain inalienable individual rights such as the right to hold property and the right to free speech. The working of the elections and the inalienable rights are spelled out in either a formal or informal constitution that is the core of the laws of the country. In democratic capitalist ideology, the economy is a free market dominated by competition that encourages innovation and all leaders are subservient to the law. Thus, democratic capitalism is supposed to involve a combination of the rule of law and the rule of people.

共产主义意识形态共产主义意识形态认为,人民通过一群将人民的最大利益放在心上的领导人来制定社会决策。因此,它将一小撮领导人置于人民的政治意愿和法律之上。与民主资本主义意识形态相比,共产主义意识形态更不重视不可剥夺的权利、私有财产和法律。

Communist Ideology Communist ideology is an ideology that sees people as making society’s decisions through a set of leaders who have the best interests of the people at heart. Thus, it places a small group of leaders above the political will of the people and above the law. It gives less weight to inalienable rights, private property, and the law than does democratic capitalist ideology.

共产主义意识形态的含义正在发生变化。卡尔·马克思在撰写《资本论》《共产党宣言》时,几乎没有花时间讨论共产主义社会将如何实现或运作。直到第一次世界大战后,苏联在共产主义政府领导下的经验,以及苏联领导人兼实践理论家弗拉基米尔·列宁的著作,我们如今所说的共产主义国家的本质才逐渐清晰。

The meaning of communist ideology is changing. When Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto, he spent almost no time discussing how a communist society would be implemented or would operate. It was only through the experience of the Soviet Union under its communist government after World War I and in the writings of the Soviet leader and practical theorist Vladimir Lenin that the nature of what we now call communist countries became clear.

因为根据马克思的理论,共产主义最终会导致国家消亡,即使是所谓的共产主义国家也承认自己处于过渡阶段。对许多人来说,共产主义本身并非违背了这些价值观,而是共产主义本身本身就处于过渡阶段。在斯大林时代,为了维护不容置疑的权威并清除国家中的政治异见人士,大量苏联人被屠杀。斯大林主义为这项政策辩护的理由——“只要目的正当,可以不择手段”——过去和现在都令大多数外部观察家无法接受。他们认为,没有任何理由能够为这种大规模杀戮辩护。

Because, according to Marx, communism involves the eventual withering away of the state, even so-called communist countries agreed that they were in a transition stage. For many people, it is not communism that went against these values; it is the transition stage. During the Stalin era, large numbers of Soviet people were murdered in order to maintain unchallenged authority and to purge the state of political dissidents. Stalinist justification for that policy— that the end justifies the means—was, and is, unacceptable to most outside observers. They felt that nothing justifies such wholesale killing.

20世纪80年代和90年代,共产主义发生了巨大的变化。许多国家,包括东德、波兰等前东欧共产主义国家以及许多前苏联加盟共和国,都彻底放弃了共产主义。而在其他国家,例如中国,共产主义在经济和政治上都得到了发展。在某些人看来,这种发展表明了民主资本主义意识形态的胜利,而且在很多方面也确实如此。前苏联人民的改革诉求集中在实现市场经济和民主选举上。显然,苏联共产主义的极权主义本质以及苏联对共产党员的偏袒是极其严重的问题。

The 1980s and 1990s saw an enormous change in communism. Many states, including the formerly communist eastern European states such as East Germany and Poland and many of the republics of the former Soviet Union, have simply abandoned it, and in others, such as China, communism has evolved both economically and politically This evolution, to some, suggests a victory of democratic capitalist ideology, and in many ways, it is. People in the former Soviet Union focused their demands for reforms on achieving markets and democratic elections. Clearly, the totalitarian nature of Soviet communism and the favoritism the Soviet Union showed to Communist Party members were highly problematic.

但其他观察家指出,共产党本身也应该遭到真正的共产主义者的反对。共产党的初衷是保护工人阶级的权利,而不是沦为如今拥有特权的阶级。这些观察家认为,共产主义失败是因为它放弃了共产主义理想。

But other observers point out that the Communist Party itself should also have been opposed by true communists. The party was meant to protect the rights of the working class, not to become a class of people with special privileges that it became. These other observers argue that communism failed because it abandoned communist ideals.

大多数社会科学家都认同苏联共产主义在实践中放弃了其理想这一观点。然而,他们对于这种放弃是否源于共产主义体制的固有属性(任何社会都不可能赋予任何群体如此大的权力)或仅仅是因为共产党人没有足够努力地维护其理想存在分歧。无论答案如何,现实是共产主义尚未消亡。例如,共产党仍然控制着中国、越南、朝鲜和古巴的政府。通过将市场资本主义与法制和政治共产主义相结合(共产党控制着文化和政治权力),中国取得了巨大的成功;中国认为,发展中国家会选择其共产主义模式,而非西方资本主义模式,并发起了所谓的“一带一路”倡议,以投资发展中国家并推广中国的政府结构。

Most social scientists accept the argument that in practice Soviet communism abandoned its ideals. They differ, however, on the question of whether that abandonment was inherent in the structure of communism—no society can ever give that much power to any group—or whether the communists simply didn’t try hard enough to preserve their ideals. Whatever the answer is to that question, the reality is that communism is not yet dead. For example, communist parties still control the governments of China, Vietnam, North Korea, and Cuba. By blending market-based capitalism with legal and politically based communism, where the Communist Party controls culture and political power, China has been very successful; China argues that its brand of Communism will be chosen by developing countries over the Western brand of capitalism, and it has created what they call a Road and Belt initiative to invest in developing countries and to spread the Chinese structure of government.

意识形态与外交政策通过强调决策的某些方面,可以使意识形态看起来或多或少可取。某种意识形态的支持者可能会对该意识形态的看法与反对者不同。如果支持者有修辞能力,他可能会说服其他人也支持它。因此,共产主义的支持者可能会强调个人财产权导致大多数人认为不良结果的情况,而民主资本主义的支持者可能会强调一小群领导人带来不良结果的情况。这就是为什么社会通常会认同某种意识形态,以及它对可接受的政府形式和政府行动的影响。然而,我们必须格外小心,不要让情绪影响我们对这些问题的考虑,以免成为意识形态主义者——那些如此执着于某些意识形态而无法理性地考虑反对意见的人;理论家们倾向于坚持要求每个人都像他们一样看待世界。

Ideologies and Foreign Policies By emphasizing certain aspects of decisions, ideologies can be made to seem more or less desirable. A supporter of a certain ideology will likely provide a different spin on the ideology than an opponent of that ideology. If that supporter has rhetorical abilities, he can likely convince others to support it as well. Thus, a supporter of communism is likely to emphasize cases when personal property rights have led to what most people would see as undesirable outcomes, while a supporter of democratic capitalism is likely to emphasize cases when the small group of leaders have brought about undesirable outcomes. That’s why societies generally come to share a certain ideology, and its implications for what is an acceptable form of government and action by government. We must, however, be extraordinarily careful about letting our emotions affect our considerations of those issues so that we do not become ideologues—individuals who are so fixated on certain ideologies that they cannot reasonably consider opposition arguments; ideologues tend to insist on everyone looking at the world as they do.

如前所述,当今全球的主导意识形态是民主资本主义。包括本文作者在内的大多数美国人都支持这种意识形态。虽然民主资本主义意识形态有很多可取之处,但我们必须注意,我们这些支持者不要沦为空想家——要确保我们的支持基于合理的论证,并且我们既能接受民主资本主义的弱点,也能接受其他意识形态的积极方面。在制定外交政策时,这样做尤为重要。例如,当我们听到其他国家发生的事情时,我们的第一反应往往是憎恶,希望我们的国家“采取行动”。这样的例子不胜枚举:乌干达对同性恋者的严厉惩罚;中国对政治权利的限制;缅甸军方对罗兴亚穆斯林少数民族的屠杀;沙特阿拉伯反对派记者被杀害;红色高棉统治下的柬埔寨对数百万人的系统性屠杀;波斯尼亚和卢旺达的大屠杀和种族清洗,以及苏丹达尔富尔地区的可怕暴行。

As we stated previously, the dominant global ideology today is democratic capitalism. It is an ideology that most people in the United States, including the authors of this text, support. While there is much to be said for the democratic capitalist ideology, we must take care to see that we supporters do not become ideologues—to make sure that our support is based on reasoned argument and that we are open to both the weaknesses of democratic capitalism and the positive aspects of other ideologies. Doing so is especially important in deciding on foreign policy. For example, often when we hear of what occurs in other countries, our immediate reaction is one of abhorrence, and we wish our country would “do something.” There have been numerous examples: the severe punishment for being gay in Uganda; the restrictions of political rights in China; the slaughter by the Myanmar military of the Rohingya Muslim minority; the killing of an opposition journalist in Saudi Arabia; the systematic killing of millions in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge; the mass genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Rwanda; and the terrible atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan.

© 冯宇/Shutterstock

© Feng Yu/Shutterstock

这些行动违背了我们关于国家可接受行为的意识形态信念。我们每个人都必须回答的问题是:这些行动是否达到了与我们的价值观相悖的程度,以至于我们会支持美国动用其权力去阻止和防止此类活动在另一个所谓的主权国家发生?如果是,我们应该使用什么样的权力?

These actions go against our ideological beliefs about what is acceptable action by a state. The question each of us must answer is: Do these actions rise to the level of contradicting our values such that we would support the United States using its power to stop and prevent such activities occurring in another supposedly sovereign country? And if so, what powers should we use?

遗憾的是,这些问题没有简单的答案。并非所有文化都像我们一样重视人权,民主资本主义意识形态也认为我们通常无权将个人价值观强加于他人。在任何情况下,利用外交渠道和公共渠道尽力支持人权都是恰当的,但这样做时,一个国家必须对友好国家和不友好国家采用相同的标准,承认各国拥有不同的社会价值观。例如,如果一个国家实行强制征兵,这种征兵制度可能违反某些人的人权观念,但不能想当然地认为这种反对行为是一项普遍认同的人权。

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to these questions. Not all cultures have the same regard for human rights as we do, and democratic capitalist ideology also holds that we generally do not have the right to impose our personal values on others. In all cases, it is proper to use diplomatic channels and public channels to do what can be done to support human rights, but in doing so a country must apply the same criteria to friendly countries as to unfriendly countries, recognizing that countries have different social values. For instance, if a country has a mandatory military draff, that draft may violate the concept some have of human rights, but it would be wrong to assume that such opposition is a universally agreed-on human right.

当诸如针对人口中大量少数群体的强制劳动营、非自愿堕胎、杀婴、限制妇女权利以及种族隔离等问题浮现时,我们面临的选择远比征兵本身更加艰难。总有一天,侵犯人权的行为会变得过于严重,以至于我们无法袖手旁观。同样,这基于我们特定的价值判断,而这些判断并非普遍认同。例如,20世纪30年代和40年代德国对犹太人的灭绝(美国最初的回应是限制犹太人的移民签证)以及20世纪70年代波尔布特在柬埔寨对数百万同胞的大屠杀(美国至少在官方上对此置之不理)。美国在伊拉克问题上立场的转变就体现了这些艰难的选择。20世纪80年代,伊拉克对伊朗和库尔德人使用化学武器时,伊拉克是美国的盟友,而美国对此保持沉默;事实上,它向伊拉克运送了更多的武器。然而,2003年,美国以伊拉克曾使用化学武器作为其应将伊拉克从萨达姆·侯赛因手中解放出来的理由之一。

More difficult choices than one about a military draft confront us when issues such as forced labor camps for large minorities within a population, involuntary abortion, infanticide, restrictions on the rights of women, and apartheid surface. There comes a point when the offenses against human rights become too great to sit back and accept. Again, this is based on our particular value judgments, which are not universally shared. Examples include the annihilation of the Jews in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s (to which the United States initially responded by restricting immigration visas for Jews) and Pol Pot’s massacre of millions of his fellow citizens in Cambodia in the 1970s (which the United States ignored, at least officially). The United States changing position in regard to Iraq exemplifies these difficult choices. When Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds in the 1980s, Iraq was a US ally, and the United States said nothing; in fact, it shipped Iraq more weapons. However, in 2003, the United States used Iraq’s previous use of chemical weapons as one of the reasons it should liberate Iraq from Saddam Hussein.

美国在世界社会中的地位

Ti he United States in the World Community

权力分立原则,经制衡制度修正,体现于1787年美国宪法,旨在防止暴政,并适用于外交和国内政治领域。尽管司法部门无权参与政策制定,其职责仅限于解释和适用条约和法规,但政府的另外两个部门——总统和国会(尤其是参议院)——都拥有制定外交政策的广泛权力。

The separation-of-powers doctrine, modified by a system of checks and balances, was embodied in the US Constitution of 1787 to prevent tyranny, and it applies to both the field of foreign affairs and domestic politics. Although the judiciary has no hand in policy making and is confined in its work to the interpretation and application of treaties and statutes, the other two branches of the government—the president and Congress (especially the Senate)—are both equipped with far-reaching authority to determine foreign policy.

总统与外交政策

The President and Foreign Policy

总统在外交事务中拥有巨大权力,这源于他有权任命外交官(经参议院同意)和接见其他国家的外交官,并对我国政府向国外传递的外交信息以及国务院的总体运作负有最终责任。总统对外交的控制赋予了总统在外交事务中强大的主动权,因为外交信函可以成为政策的载体,例如1899年,国务卿约翰·海伊通过向选定的政府发送信息,在中国开创了门户开放政策。总统在外交方面的特权还赋予他拒绝或给予新政府或国家的承认的权力,因为承认通常是通过建立外交关系来实现的。奥巴马总统在2014年与古巴建立正式关系,扭转了美国半个世纪以来的政策,体现了这一政策。

The president derives great power in foreign affairs from the right to appoint diplomats (with the consent of the Senate) and to receive the diplomats of other countries, and has ultimate responsibility for the diplomatic messages our government transmits abroad and for the operations of the Department of State generally. Presidential control of diplomacy gives the president a strong initiative in foreign affairs, for diplomatic correspondence can be a vehicle of policy, as in 1899, when Secretary of State John Hay originated the Open Door policy in China by messages to selected governments. The president’s prerogative in diplomacy confers, too, the right to deny or to extend recognition to a new government or state, for it is usually by establishing diplomatic relationships that recognition is accorded. President Obama demonstrated that policy when he established formal relations with Cuba in 2014, reversing US policy of half a century.

总统在条约制定方面也拥有主动权,但这些行动需要在投票时获得出席参议员三分之二的批准。这种安排实际上是美国政府各部门普遍存在的制衡机制的一个很好的例子。参议院因其在审议条约(尤其是1919年的《凡尔赛条约》)时采取的阻挠策略而受到诸多批评,并且已有数项修改宪法的提案提交,旨在以国会两院多数票取代参议院三分之二的票数来制定条约,但这些提案从未获得太多支持。这种双重责任可能产生的一些问题,可以从1974年至1980年在联合国主持下谈判达成的《海洋法条约》中看出。该条约由吉米·卡特总统签署,但从未得到参议院批准。罗纳德·里根总统当选后明确否认了该条约,使美国处于一个模棱两可的境地。

The president has the initiative in treaty making, too, but here these actions require the approval of two-thirds of the senators present when a vote is taken. This arrangement, indeed, is a good example of the system of checks and balances that pervades all of government in the United States. Much criticism has been aimed at the Senate for its obstructive tactics in its consideration of treaties—notably the Treaty of Versailles (1919)—and several proposals have been submitted to amend the Constitution to substitute a majority of both houses of Congress in place of two-thirds of the Senate in treaty making, but such proposals have never had much support. Some of the problems that can develop from this dual responsibility can be seen in the Law of the Sea Treaty negotiated between 1974 and 1980 under UN auspices. This treaty was signed by President Jimmy Carter but was never approved by the Senate. When President Ronald Reagan was elected, he specifically disavowed the treaty, leaving the United States in an ambiguous position.

乔治·W·布什总统坚决反对美国参与国际条约,反对多边合作(即各国试图通过国际条约和组织协商解决分歧),并主张单边主义(即各国各自为政)。奥巴马总统则与其他国家更加紧密地合作,谈判新的国际贸易和气候伙伴关系,并与其他国家共同努力达成共识。

President George W. Bush took a strong position against US involvement in international treaties, opposing multilateral cooperation, in which countries attempt to negotiate their differences through international treaties and organizations, and favoring unilateralism, in which each country goes it alone. President Obama worked much more closely with other countries, negotiating new international trade and climate partnerships, and working jointly with other countries toward consensus.

特朗普总统的总统任期标志着其基调和政策的转变。他让美国退出了《巴黎气候协定》和《跨太平洋伙伴关系协定》,后者是与日本和其他太平洋盆地国家达成的一项新的贸易协定。如前所述,他将这一战略称为“美国优先”政策。如何准确解读“美国优先”尚不明确;妥协往往是推进美国利益的最佳方式,这意味着接受协议中不太理想的方面,以便获得自己想要的其他方面。没有妥协,就不会达成协议,这对每个人来说都是更糟的。争论不可避免地集中在谈判中各方的力度上。拜登总统放弃了特朗普的“美国优先”政策,回归了更具合作性的谈判立场,希望达成共识。

President Trump's presidency marked a change in tone and policy. He pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which was a new trade pact with Japan and other Pacific basin countries. As we noted earlier, he called this strategy the America First policy. Exactly how to interpret America First was unclear; often compromise is the best way to advance American interests and that means accepting less desirable aspects of an agreement so that one gains other aspects that are what one wanted. Without compromise there would be no agreement, which would be worse for everyone. The debate is inevitably over how hard one pushes in the negotiations. President Biden dropped Trump’s America First policy and returned to a more cooperative negotiating stance in the hope of arriving at a consensus.

总统在外交事务中的权威因一些更普遍的权力而得到增强。作为武装部队总司令,总统可以派遣陆军、海军、海军陆战队或空军前往世界任何地方执行一项政策,并可以签订行政协议,将海外基地交由各军种使用。这实际上赋予了总统巨大的权力,使其无需参议院批准即可发动战争。例如,在约翰·F·肯尼迪总统执政期间,美国政府未经参议院批准就支持了对古巴的猪湾入侵。同样,1964年,林登·B·约翰逊总统开始在越南直接扮演美国军事角色,在北部湾美国军舰遭到袭击后,下令攻击北越军事目标。

The president’s authority in foreign affairs is augmented by some more general powers. As commander in chief of the armed forces, the president can dispatch the Army, Navy, Marines, or Air Force to any part of the world to carry out a policy and can conclude executive agreements by which bases abroad are placed at the disposal of the services. This gives the president enormous power, in effect, to enter into war without Senate approval. For example, during President John F. Kennedy’s administration, the US government supported the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba with no Senate approval. Similarly, in 1964 President Lyndon B. Johnson began the direct US military role in Vietnam by ordering attacks on North Vietnamese military targets following attacks on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.

为了应对后一事件,国会通过了一系列法律,对总统的行动施加了更严格的限制。由于宪法明确赋予国会宣战和控制海军及陆海军开支的权力,有人认为总统作为总司令的自由裁量权过于宽泛。这些法律剥夺了总统“发动战争、出售武器、进行秘密行动或与外国政府签订行政协议”的权力。根据这些法律,总统只能在未经国会同意的情况下,在有限的时间内部署军队保护自身利益。

In response to the latter incident, Congress passed a series of laws that placed stricter limits on presidential actions. Because the Constitution explicitly gives Congress the powers to declare war and control military and naval expenditures, it was argued that the president’s discretionary powers as commander in chief had become too broad. These laws removed the president’s power to “wage war, sell arms, conduct covert operations, or enter into executive agreements with foreign governments.” According to these laws, a president can deploy troops to protect our interest only for a limited time without the consent of Congress.

美国外交政策

US Foreign Policies

十九世纪的大部分时间里,美国都深信孤立主义。孤立主义盛行一时,美国奉行不结盟的外交政策,并尽可能地避免卷入欧洲的政治纷争。即使在1898年美西战争之后,美国仍然保持着超然的姿态,尽管战争期间美国获得了夏威夷等零散的属地,从而极大地拓展了美国的利益。1917年美国加入第一次世界大战后,孤立主义崩溃,但1919年至1920年,参议院否决美国加入新成立的国际联盟,孤立主义又死灰复燃。尽管在20世纪20年代和30年代受到攻击,但孤立主义仍然拥有强大的支持,这体现在美国中立立法(1935年及之后)以及1939年至1941年为阻止美国卷入第二次世界大战所做的努力上。

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the United States was deeply committed to a policy of isolation. Isolationism, a policy according to which the United States made no alliances abroad and kept as free as possible from the political embroilments of Europe, reigned supreme. Even after the Spanish American War (1898), the nation remained aloof, though the acquisition of scattered dependencies such as Hawaii as a result of the war had widened US interests a great deal. Isolationism broke down when the United States in 1917 became a belligerent in World War I, but it was revived in 1919-1920, when the Senate rejected membership in the new League of Nations. Although under attack in the 1920s and 1930s, isolationism continued to have strong support, as shown by US neutrality legislation (1935 and later) and by the efforts from 1939 to 1941 to keep the United States from becoming involved in World War II.

但1941年日本偷袭珍珠港改变了这一切,使我们从孤立主义时期进入了国际主义时期。国际主义指的是相信世界和平可以通过所有国家的友好合作来实现。因此,美国迅速卷入了世界政治,并一直深度参与其中。

But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 changed all this and moved us from a period of isolationism to a period of internationalism. Internationalism refers to the belief that world peace can be realized by the friendly association of all nations. As a result, the United States quickly became enmeshed in world politics and has continued to be deeply involved ever since.

自第二次世界大战以来,美国结成或确认了一系列同盟,并在世界各地,尤其是在欧洲、中东和亚洲,维持着军队或军事前哨。美国已投入大量军事力量参与四场未宣战的局部战争:朝鲜战争、越南战争、伊拉克战争和阿富汗战争。

Since World War II, the United States has made or affirmed a number of alliances and maintained troops or military outposts in various parts of the world, especially in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The United States has committed large military forces to the fighting of four local undeclared wars: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

美国无人机袭击也门,炸死三名基地组织疑似武装分子。 © Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images

The aftermath of a US drone strike in Yemen that killed three suspected Al-Qaeda militants. © Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images

战后时期,我们的许多外交政策都致力于保护资本主义和“自由”民主。例如,二战结束后我们的外交政策围绕着1947年的杜鲁门主义展开。杜鲁门主义的本质是:如果任何受到共产主义侵略威胁的国家愿意抵抗这种威胁并寻求帮助,美国就会向其提供援助。这通常被称为遏制共产主义的政策,也是所谓冷战的一部分。冷战是指战后直至20世纪90年代,共产主义国家(如前苏联)与美国及其盟友之间的紧张关系。冷战期间,美国认为,如果它不带头抵抗苏联的侵略行动,美国将不得不采取更强有力的行动来阻止其扩张。联盟和其他共产主义国家,可能不会有有效的反对力量,并会产生多米诺骨牌效应,一个又一个的国家落入共产党手中。

Much of our foreign policy in the postwar era has been dedicated to the protection of capitalism and “liberal” democracy. For example, our foreign policy immediately following World War II revolved around the Truman Doctrine of 1947. Essentially, the Truman Doctrine stated that if any country threatened by communist aggression was willing to resist that threat and asked for help, the United States would come to its aid. This was often referred to as a policy of containing communism and was part of what was called the Cold War, the tension between communist countries, such as the former Soviet Union, and the United States and its allies following World War II until the 1990s. During the Cold War, the United States believed that if it did not take the lead in resisting the aggressive moves of the Soviet Union and the other communist nations, there would probably be no effective opposition, and a domino effect would occur, with one country after another falling to the communists.

冷战时期和平的基础是核对峙——一种僵局,其根源在于各方认识到,如果遭到攻击,对方拥有足够的能力发动毁灭性的核反击。在核对峙中,由于每个国家都拥有多次摧毁对方的能力,军事优势的概念变得难以界定。这一点在20世纪80年代尤为明显,当时美国和前苏联就削减军备进行了谈判。双方都声称对方拥有军事优势,但究竟哪一方拥有优势却不得而知。

The basis of the peace in the Cold War was a nuclear standoff—a position of stalemate brought about by the recognition that, if attacked, the other party possesses sufficient ability to launch a devastating nuclear counterattack. In a nuclear standoff, because each country has the ability to destroy the other many times over, the concept of military superiority becomes difficult to define. This was especially apparent in the 1980s, when the United States and the former USSR negotiated a reduction of the arms buildup. Both sides claimed that the other had military superiority; which side actually did was unclear.

20世纪60年代和70年代初,美国卷入越南战争后,遏制外交政策的策略不再受青睐,一段缓和时期——即国家间紧张关系和政治紧张局势的缓和或缓和——取代了冷战。在缓和时期,美国对世界政治事务的参与度有所下降,国防支出占总产出的比重也随之降低。这种情况在2001年9月发生了改变,当时恐怖分子袭击了美国,美国宣布对恐怖主义宣战。

The containment approach to US foreign policy lost favor following our involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s, and a period of d’etent—an easing or relaxation of strained relations and political tensions between countries—replaced the Cold War. Under detente, the US involvement in world political affairs decreased, and the United States reduced its expenditures on defense as a percentage of total output. That changed in September 2001, when terrorists attacked the United States and the United States declared a war on terrorism.

这场反恐战争并非是美国对抗某个特定国家,而是对抗一个可能存在于任何地方的模糊敌人。美国成立了新的国土安全部,军费开支也大幅增加。但这场反恐战争究竟如何进行,仍是一个未知数。美国有权在任何地方打击恐怖主义吗?先发制人的战争真的合理吗?为了加强安全,对个人权利进行哪些限制是可以接受的?美国有权消灭那些它认为窝藏恐怖分子并研制大规模杀伤性武器的政府吗?它需要什么证据才能发动这种先发制人的战争?最后,发动这样的战争是否弊大于利,是否会加剧人们对美国的仇恨,从而滋生更多的恐怖主义?

That war on terrorism pitted the United States not against a particular country, but against an ambiguous enemy who could be anywhere. A new Homeland Security Department was established in the United States, and military expenditures increased substantially. But exactly how this war on terrorism was to be fought remained open. Does the United States have the right to fight terrorism anywhere? Are preemptive wars truly justified? What limitations on individual rights are acceptable trade-offs for increased security? Does the United States have the right to eliminate governments it believes are harboring terrorists and developing weapons of mass destruction? What proof does it need to carry on such preemptive wars? And, finally, will fighting such a war do more harm than good, creating hatred for the United States that will lead to more terrorism?

2009年,巴拉克·奥巴马就任总统,向世界发出信号,他的政府将减少对其他国家的好战情绪,并将与它们合作,找到多边解决问题的方案。然而,与此同时,他承诺美国将对恐怖主义保持警惕,并将继续甚至扩大对阿富汗塔利班的战争。特朗普总统于2017年接替奥巴马总统,并在谈判中采取了比奥巴马更强硬得多的立场。他将自己的政策命名为“美国优先”,宣称美国拥有军事力量,并且不惧使用它。2021年,拜登的总统任期回归了国际共识,但由于其他国家担心未来该政策将被更加以美国为中心的政策所取代,这使得这一政策的实施变得更加困难。

In 2009, Barack Obama became president and signaled to the world that his administration would be less belligerent to other countries and would work with them to arrive at a multinational solution to problems. However, at the same time, he promised that the United States would be vigilant against terrorism and would carry on and even expand the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. President Trump replaced President Obama in 2017 and took much stronger negotiating positions than did Obama. He named his policy the America First policy. He declared that the United States had military power and that it wasn’t afraid to use it. In 2021 Biden’s presidency has moved back to an international consensus approach, which has been made more difficult by concern of other countries that it will be replaced in the future by a more America-centric policy.

学习与回顾

Study and Review

关键点

Key Point

  • 国家是代表其公民开展国际关系的权力机构。
  • The state is the institution empowered to conduct international relations for its citizens.
  • 权力是迫使另一方采取违背其明确意愿的行动的能力。
  • Power is the capacity to compel another party to commit an action contrary to its explicitly stated will.
  • 政府利用外交政策来实现其国际目标,但在制定政策时必须考虑地理和其他国家的优势。
  • Governments use foreign policy to achieve their international objectives, but they must take geography and other nations’ strengths into consideration when they make policy.
  • 在过去的一个世纪里,最流行的三种意识形态是共产主义意识形态、民主资本主义意识形态和法西斯主义意识形态
  • In the past century, the three most prevalent ideologies have been the communist ideology, the democratic capitalist ideology, and the fascist ideology
  • 总统负责外交政策并担任武装部队总司令,但只有国会才能宣战。
  • The president is responsible for foreign policy and is commander in chief of the armed forces, but only Congress can declare war.
  • 21 世纪初,美国采取了单边主义和先发制人的政策,这一政策在奥巴马总统任期内有所修改。
  • In the early 2000s, the United States adopted a policy of unilateralism and preemption, a policy that was modified somewhat under President Obama.

一些重要术语

ome Important Terms

  • 权力平衡(362)
  • balance of power (362)
  • 冷战(368)
  • Cold War (368)
  • 和解 (369)
  • d'etente (369)
  • 多米诺骨牌效应(369)
  • domino effect (369)
  • 侨民(353)
  • diaspora (353)
  • 法西斯意识形态(364)
  • fascist ideology (364)
  • 外交政策(363)
  • foreign policies (363)
  • 地缘政治 (364)
  • geopolitics (364)
  • 霸权(358)
  • hegemon (358)
  • 理论家(365)
  • ideologues (365)
  • 意识形态(364)
  • ideology (364)
  • 国际主义(368)
  • internationalism (368)
  • 孤立主义(368)
  • isolationism (368)
  • 国家 (353)
  • nation (353)
  • 民族国家 (353)
  • nation-state (353)
  • 新世界秩序(362)
  • new world order (362)
  • 北大西洋公约组织
  • North Atlantic Treaty Organization
  • (北约) (362) 核对峙 (369)
  • (NATO) (362) nuclear standoff (369)
  • 电源 (357)
  • power (357)
  • 现实主义理论(362)
  • realist theory (362)
  • 申根协定 (356)
  • Schengen Agreement (356)
  • 州 (352)
  • state (352)
  • 复杂相互依存理论(362)
  • theory of complex interdependence (362)
  • 杜鲁门主义 (368)
  • Truman Doctrine (368)
  • 单侧 (361)
  • unilateral (361)
  • 大规模杀伤性武器(358)
  • weapons of mass destruction (358)

复习和讨论的问题

uestions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 从什么意义上说,世界民族国家形成了一个共同体?
  2. In what sense do the nation-states of the world form a community?
  3. 列出国家和州之间更重要的差异。
  4. List the more important differences between nations and states.
  5. 从历史上看,民族国家是如何发展的?
  6. Historically, how did nation-states develop?
  7. 如果《尼斯条约》获得批准,欧盟还会成为一个国家吗?为什么会这样?
  8. Would the European Union have been a state if the Treaty of Nice had been ratified? Why or why not?
  9. 一个国家的军事力量在支持其外交政策方面的有效性除了取决于其武装部队的规模、训练和装备之外,还取决于哪些因素?
  10. The effectiveness of a nation’s military power in supporting its foreign policies depends on what factors in addition to the size, training, and equipment of its armed forces?
  11. 为什么民主政府的行动比极权政府更受舆论的制约?
  12. Why are democratic governments more restricted in their actions by public opinion than are totalitarian governments?
  13. 什么是霸权?
  14. What is a hegemon?
  15. 一个国家的经济实力由哪些因素构成?
  16. What factors make up a nation’s economic power?
  17. 实现一定程度的国家安全有哪三种可能的方法?请分别解释。
  18. What are three possible approaches to the problem of achieving some degree of national security? Explain each.
  19. 解释复杂相互依存理论如何取代力量平衡来维持当今世界的和平。
  20. Explain how the theory of complex interdependence is becoming a substitute for the balance of power in maintaining the peace in today’s world.
  21. 外交政策如何受到(a)地理和(b)意识形态的影响?
  22. How may foreign policies be influenced by (a) geography and (b) an ideology?
  23. 美国总统在外交事务中拥有哪些权力?国会拥有哪些权力?指出这种职责划分的优缺点。
  24. What powers does the president of the United States have in foreign affairs? What powers are held by Congress? Point out the advantages and disadvantages of this division of responsibility.
  25. 你认为美国总统在制定和执行外交政策方面应该拥有更多还是更少的权力?请为你的答案辩护。
  26. Do you believe that the president of the United States should have more power or less power to determine and carry out foreign policies? Defend your answer.
  27. 1991年的海湾战争是否正义?2003年的伊拉克战争是否正义?为什么?
  28. Was the 1991 Persian Gulf War justified? Was the 2003 Iraq War justified? Why or why not?
  29. 美国的先发制人政策是什么?其合理性如何?
  30. What is the US policy of preemption, and is it justified?
  31. 特朗普的“美国优先”政策如何被视为一种有效的谈判策略?它真的有效吗?
  32. How might Trump’s American First policy be seen as a useful negotiating strategy? Is it a useful one?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 选择一个你从未去过的国家。访问http://projectvisa.com/,查找你可以申请哪种类型的旅行签证入境,以及如何申请。
  2. Pick a country to which you have never traveled. Using http://projectvisa.com/, find what type of travel visa you can get to enter the country and how to do so.
  3. 请访问http://archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters.html。美国宪法第二条第二款第一项和第二项规定了什么?
  4. Go to http://archives.gov/exhibits/charters/charters.html. What does Article II, Section 2, clauses 1 and 2 of the United States Constitution state?
  5. 观看视频:www.youtube.com/watch?v =okE3F7jiLI8。新地缘政治意味着什么?
  6. Watch the video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=okE3F7jiLI8. What is meant by the new geopolitics?
  7. 使用美国外交政策委员会的网站www.afpc.org/描述他们的最新新闻故事之一。
  8. Using the website of the American Foreign Policy Council, www.afpc.org/, describe one of their latest news stories.
  9. 通过北约网站www.nato.int/,您可以了解什么是欧洲-大西洋伙伴关系委员会,该委员会有多少个成员?
  10. Using the NATO site, www.nato.int/, what is the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, and how many members are there?

进一步研究

Further Study

  • 布鲁姆,威廉,《美国最致命的输出:民主——美国外交政策及其他一切的真相》,伊利诺伊州芝加哥:芝加哥大学出版社,2015 年。
  • Blum, William, America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy—The Truth about US Foreign Policy and Everything Else, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
  • 乔姆斯基,诺姆,《谁统治世界?》纽约:亨利·霍尔特公司,2016 年。
  • Chomsky, Noam, Who Rules the World? New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2016.
  • 理查德·哈斯,《世界:简介》。纽约:企鹅出版社,2020年。
  • Haass, Richard, The World: A Brief Introduction. New York: Penguin Press, 2020.
  • 胡克,史蒂文,《美国外交政策:世界强国的悖论》,华盛顿特区:CQ Press,2010 年。
  • Hook, Steven, U.S. Foreign Policy: The Paradox of World Power, Washington, DC: CQ Press, 2010.
  • 哈立迪·拉希德 (Khalidi, Rashid),《冷战与美国在中东的主导地位》,马萨诸塞州波士顿:Beacon Press,2009 年。
  • Khalidi, Rashid, The Cold War and American Dominance in the Middle East, Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2009.
  • 金吉,詹姆斯,《中国震撼世界:巨人的崛起和动荡的未来——以及对美国的挑战》,马萨诸塞州波士顿:水手图书,2007 年。
  • Kynge, James, China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future—and the Challenge for America, Boston, MA: Mariner Books, 2007.
  • 拉克尔,沃尔特,《衰落之后:欧洲梦的终结和一个大陆的衰落》纽约:托马斯·邓恩图书,2012 年。
  • Laqueur, Walter, After the Fall: The End of the European Dream and the Decline of a Continent, New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2012.
  • Lavelle, Kathryn C. 《多边主义的挑战》,康涅狄格州纽黑文:耶鲁大学出版社,2020 年。
  • Lavelle, Kathryn C. The Challenges of Multilateralism, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020.
  • 雷切尔·玛多,《漂移:美国军事力量的脱离》,纽约:皇冠出版社,2012 年。
  • Maddow, Rachel, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, New York: Crown Publishing, 2012.
  • 拉赫曼,吉迪恩,《东方化:亚洲的崛起与美国的衰落》纽约:其他出版社,2015 年。
  • Rachman, Gideon, Easternizatian: Asia’s Rise and America's Decline, New York: Other Press, 2015.
  • 史密斯,鲁珀特,《武力的效用:现代世界的战争艺术》,纽约:企鹅/艾伦巷出版社,2005 年。
  • Smith, Rupert, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World, New York: Penguin/Allen Lane, 2005.
  • 美国外交政策,纽约:Farrar, Straus, & Giroux,2008 年。
  • U.S. Foreign Policy, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2008.
  • 扎卡里亚,法里德,《后美国世界:2.0 版》纽约:WW.诺顿,2011 年。
  • Zakaria, Fareed, The Post-American World: Release 2.0, New York: WW. Norton, 2011.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第20 国际经济关系

chapter 20 International Economic Relations

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-20

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-20

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 区分固定汇率和浮动汇率
  • Distinguish between a fixed and a flexible exchange rate
  • 区分国际收支和贸易平衡
  • Differentiate between the balance of payments and the balance of trade
  • 比较国际贸易的优缺点
  • Compare the advantages and disadvantages of international trade
  • 陈述支持和反对保护性关税的论点
  • State the arguments in favor of and against protective tariffs
  • 说明美国是债务国还是债权国,并解释这意味着什么
  • State whether the United States is a debtor or a creditor nation and explain what that means
  • 讨论限制进口以保护美国就业免受全球化威胁的利弊
  • Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of limiting imports to protect US jobs from the threat of globalization

我们能坦诚相待吗?一旦我们拨开国家(和个人)所持的许多冠冕堂皇的道德立场,就会发现这些立场背后往往隐藏着粗俗的物质主义或经济动机。因此,要理解国际关系,我们必须了解国际经济学,它包括对国际贸易、外汇汇率确定和对外投资的研究。

Can we be frank? Once we cut through many of the high-sounding moral positions nations (and individuals) take, often there is a crass materialistic or economic motive underlying those positions. Therefore, to understand international relations, we must understand international economics, which includes the study of international trade, determination of foreign exchange rates, and foreign investment.

在第三章中,我们讨论了国际贸易在社会发展和文化演变中的兴起及其重要性。随着国家的发展,贸易传递了文化,使商人致富,从而打破了封建制度,并催生了现代民族国家的建立。国际贸易的现代作用同样重要,但如果没有历史的视角,我们就很难看到它。

In Chapter 3, we discussed the rise and importance of international trade in the development of society and the evolution of cultures. As nations developed, trade transferred culture and made merchants rich, which helped break up the feudal system and led to the modern nation-state. The modern role of international trade is no less important, but without the perspective of history we are less likely to see it.

20世纪30年代,美国奉行孤立主义的贸易政策。自那时起,国际贸易对美国的重要性显著提升,尤其是在过去的几十年里,如今已占美国GDP总量的10%以上。但即使是这个比例也低估了其重要性。它没有考虑到这样一个事实:一旦出口产业建立起来,这些产业的从业人员就会为生产国内消费产品的产业提供一部分市场。因此,如果出口下降,根据乘数原理,其他产业的生产和就业也会下降。

In the 1930s, the United States followed an isolationist policy toward trade. Since that time, the importance of international trade for the United States has grown significantly, particularly over the last few decades, and now accounts for well over 10 percent of our total GDP. But even this percentage underestimates its importance. It fails to take into account the fact that once export industries become established, people employed in them furnish a part of the market for industries producing products for domestic consumption. Hence, if exports decline, production and employment, in accordance with the multiplier principle, also fall off in other industries.

这一数字还没有考虑到进口对我们的重要性。我们的许多进口商品都是必需品或理想商品,我们自身无法生产,或者产量无法达到我们的预期,例如咖啡、香蕉、天然橡胶、镍、锡和石油。20世纪70年代阿拉伯石油禁运导致的美国经济危机和短缺,彰显了国际贸易的重要性。同样,2020年代初由于国际供应链问题导致许多商品短缺,也证明了这一点。

That figure also does not take into account the importance of imports to us. A number of our imports are necessary or desirable commodities that we cannot produce ourselves, or cannot produce as much of as we would like, such as coffee, bananas, natural rubber, nickel, tin, and oil. The crisis and shortages in the US economy as a result of the Arab oil embargo in the 1970s demonstrated the importance of international trade. Similarly, the shortages of many items in the early 2020s due to international supply chain issues was another demonstration.

多年来,美国一直是全球化的坚定支持者,鼓励贸易,并签署了促进贸易的国际协议。2008年,随着美国经济陷入衰退,对美国制成品的需求下降,这一局面开始发生变化。下降。对国际贸易的担忧在青少年时期加剧,唐纳德·特朗普当选总统后,他开始让美国退出贸易协定。拜登总统在2020年当选,标志着美国与其他国家的关系采取了更具合作性的方式,但其目的仍然是为了保护美国的制造业和生产。在本章中,我们将提供经济学家对国际贸易的看法。

Over the years the United States has been a strong supporter of globalization, encouraging trade and entering into international agreements that encouraged trade. That started to change in 2008 as the US economy fell into a recession and demand for US manufactured goods declined. The concern about international trade accelerated in the teens, and when Donald Trump was elected president he started to pull the United States out of trade agreements. President Biden’s election in 2020 marked a more cooperative approach to relations with other countries, but it was still designed to protect American manufacturing and production. In this chapter, we provide economists’ views of international trade.

什么使得国际贸易与众不同?

What Makes International Trade Different?

国际贸易不同于国内贸易的原因之一是,它涉及使用不同的货币。当你从中国购买商品时,中国生产商希望以人民币(中国货币)付款,而你希望以美元支付。这种贸易的进行,必须有货币兑换——用人民币兑换美元。进行这种兑换的市场被称为外汇市场。

One reason why international trade is different from domestic trade is because it involves the use of different currencies. When you buy something from China, the Chinese producer wants to be paid in yuan (the Chinese currency) and you want to pay with dollars. For that trade to take place, there must be an exchange of currencies—trading yuan for dollars. The market in which that takes place is called the Foreign Exchange Market.

外汇市场

Foreign Exchange Markets

外汇是指将一个国家的货币兑换成另一个国家的货币以及货币本身的过程。因此,日元在美国被称为外汇。商品通常以货币支付,但在国际贸易中,买方使用一种货币,卖方使用另一种货币,因此一方支付的价格和另一方收到的价格部分取决于两种货币的汇率。例如,1980 年,当一英镑兑美元的价格为 2.20 美元时,一套在伦敦售价 10 英镑的瓷器要花掉一位美国游客 22 美元。自 1980 年以来,英镑大幅贬值。2020 年秋季,一英镑的价格约为 1.36 美元,因此这套瓷器要花掉这位游客大约 13.60 美元。

Foreign exchange refers to the process of exchanging the money of one country for that of another and to the monies themselves. Thus, the Japanese yen is called foreign exchange in the United States. Goods are generally paid for in terms of money, but in international trade the buyer uses one kind of money and the seller another, so the price that one pays and the other receives depends in part on the rate at which their two currencies exchange. For example, in 1980, when the price of a British pound in terms of dollars was $2.20, a setting of chinaware selling for £10 in London would have cost a US tourist $22. Since 1980, the pound has significantly depreciated. In fall 2020, a pound cost about $1.36, so the chinaware would cost that tourist about $13.60.

在研究外汇时,我们首先关注的是汇率及其确定方式。两国之间的汇率最好保持在有利于贸易的水平,并且保持合理稳定。汇率的不稳定波动会阻碍贸易,因为它会增加需要时间才能完成的交易的不确定性和风险。

In studying foreign exchange, we are concerned first of all with exchange rates and how they are determined. It is desirable for exchange rates between two countries to be at a level that will encourage trade. They should also be reasonably stable. Erratic fluctuations in exchange rates are a handicap to trade because they increase the uncertainty and risk involved in transactions that require time for their completion.

固定与浮动汇率制度

Fixed and Flexible Exchange Rate Systems

第一次世界大战前多年,世界主要贸易国都维持着以固定汇率为基础的货币体系。固定汇率是指各国货币之间的相对价值由双方协商确定。而浮动汇率则是指政府根据市场供求力量来确定本国汇率。这一时期,固定汇率制度是通过金本位制实现的,金本位制是指各国货币的价格与黄金价格挂钩的制度。第一次世界大战期间,金本位制在大多数国家崩溃。战后,虽然金本位制一度恢复,但随着20世纪30年代初大萧条的到来,金本位制再次全面崩溃。

For many years before World War I, the principal trading countries of the world maintained monetary systems based on fixed exchange rates, exchange rates in which the relative values of the various currencies are established by agreement. Under flexible exchange rates, in contrast, the government allows the market forces of supply and demand to fix the exchange rate of that country. A fixed exchange rate system was achieved during this time by using the gold standard, a system in which the prices of the various currencies are set in relation to the price of gold. During World War I, this standard broke down in most countries, and though it was revived for a time after the war, it suffered a second general breakdown with the coming of the Great Depression in the early 1930s.

货币在外汇市场上兑换。 © baona/iStock

Currencies are exchanged in foreign exchange markets. © baona/iStock

当两个或两个以上国家实行金本位时,其货币之间的汇率波动很小。在传统的金本位制下,每个国家都可以自由地用其纸币兑换一定数量的黄金。当两个国家都实行纸币和黄金自由兑换时,其货币的相对价值几乎完全取决于其所代表的黄金的相对数量。

When two or more countries are on the gold standard, only very small fluctuations can take place in the exchange rates between their currencies. Under the traditional gold standard, each country will exchange its paper money freely for a fixed amount of gold. When paper money and gold are freely interchangeable in each of two countries, the relative values of their currencies depend almost entirely on the relative amounts of gold they represent.

假设法国法郎曾经代表4格令黄金,美元代表20格令黄金。那么, 1美元始终可以兑换大约5法郎。由于运输黄金的成本,汇率仍可能出现轻微波动。例如,虽然在金本位制下,美国人可以在美国用美元兑换一定数量的黄金,但为了在巴黎用这些黄金兑换法郎,他们必须先支付将黄金运往法国的费用。

Let us suppose that the French franc once represented 4 grains of gold and the US dollar 20 grains of gold.1 Then a dollar would always exchange for approximately 5 francs. Slight variations in the exchange rate could still occur because of the cost of shipping gold. For example, though under the gold standard Americans could always exchange dollars in this country for a fixed amount of gold, in order to use this gold to obtain francs in Paris they would first have to pay the cost of shipping it to France.

金本位的弱点在于,为了维持金本位,政府必须持有足够的黄金来满足所有赎回货币的需求。金本位的优势在于,只要政府决心维持金本位,它就能有效抑制通货膨胀。它迫使政府限制银行存款的扩张和纸币的发行。否则,将纸币兑换成黄金的需求很快就会达到一定水平,迫使政府停止赎回,从而自动将其货币置于纸币本位,即法定本位。

The weakness of the gold standard was that, in order to maintain it, a government had to keep on hand enough gold to meet all demands for redeeming its currency. The advantage of this standard was that, as long as there was a determination to maintain it, it was an effective check on inflation. It forced a government to limit the expansion of bank deposits and the issue of paper money. Otherwise, demands for conversion of paper into gold would soon reach such a level that the government would be forced to stop redemption, thus automatically placing its money on a paper, or fiat, standard.

纸币本位制与金汇兑本位制纸币本位制是指一个国家的基本货币单位由刻有图案的纸币来代表。这些纸币的价值仅仅在于其数量有限,并且在发行国属于法定货币,且在贸易中被接受。

Paper Standards and the Gold Exchange Standard A paper standard is a system under which the basic monetary unit of a country is represented by engraved pieces of paper. These have value only because they are limited in quantity and, in the country of issue, are legal tender and acceptable in trade.

二战后,西方世界最初实行的是改良的金本位制,即允许各国小幅调整汇率(贬值)(幅度不超过10%),但未经其他国家批准,不得大幅贬值。这项批准得到了国际货币基金组织(IMF)的批准。该组织是二战后成立不久的国际组织,其宗旨是协助调整和稳定汇率,并促进自由外汇市场的发展。IMF可以通过向其成员国提供有限数量的黄金或可兑换外币贷款,帮助它们应对暂时的外汇困难。

After World War II, the Western world initially went on a modified gold standard, under which countries were allowed to adjust their exchange rate (devalue) slightly (by no more than 10 percent), but no major devaluations were allowed without approval from other countries. The approval came from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), an international organization set up just after World War II, both to aid in the adjustment and stabilization of exchange rates and to bring about the development of free exchange markets. The IMF could help its members meet temporary exchange difficulties by lending them limited amounts of gold or redeemable foreign currency.

尽管国际货币基金组织并未完全实现其创始人的期望,但它帮助稳定了外汇市场,并且至今仍在发挥作用。它通过向那些对其货币失去信心的国家提供贷款来实现这一目标。例如,2020年,当新冠病毒疫情爆发并威胁到经济危机时,国际货币基金组织向乌克兰提供了一笔贷款,使该国在遭受病毒重创后得以稳定经济。

Though the IMF has not entirely lived up to the hopes of its founders, it has helped stabilize foreign exchange markets and continues to do so today. It does so by providing loans for countries that are experiencing a loss of faith in their currency. For example, in 2020, when the coronavirus outbreak threatened an economic crisis, the IMF provided a loan to Ukraine, which allowed the country to stabilize its economy after it was hit hard by the virus.

从固定汇率制到现行制度:肮脏浮动修正金本位与其说是真正的金本位,不如说是一种幻觉。这种幻觉在 1971 年破灭,当时国外对黄金的需求如此之大,以至于美国停止了可兑换性,我们的国际汇率体系从固定汇率制和修正金本位制转变为浮动汇率制。在新制度下,一个国家的许多储备不再以黄金形式持有,而是以储备货币(如美元)和特别提款权(一种纸黄金)形式持有。这些特别提款权现在可以在一定限度内用于履行国际义务,国际货币基金组织也可以将其借给那些其他储备因国际收支逆差而迅速减少的国家。

From a Fixed System to Our Current System: The Dirty Float The modified gold standard was more an illusion than an actual gold standard, and that illusion ended in 1971, when the foreign demand for gold was so great that the United States stopped convertibility, and our international exchange system moved from a fixed exchange rate system and a modified gold standard to a flexible exchange rates system. Under the new system, many of a country’s reserves are no longer held in gold, but are instead held in reserve currencies, such as the dollar, and in special drawing rights, a type of paper gold. These special drawing rights can now be used, within limits, for meeting international obligations, and they can be lent by the IMF to countries whose other reserves are being rapidly reduced by an adverse balance of payments.

其他国家不再能用美元从美国获得黄金,但他们可以用美元兑换美国商品。随着美国商品的供求波动,美元的供求也会波动,从而改变其相对价格。因此,一个月你可能能以 1.60 美元的价格买到一英镑,而下个月可能要花 1.70 美元。在这种情况下,美元的价值就下降了,因为之前花费 1.60 美元的英镑现在花费 1.70 美元。在一个完全灵活的汇率制度下,国际收支必须始终保持平衡。换句话说,货币的供给必须始终等于对该货币的需求。这源于国际收支的定义,即我们之前讨论过的对外支付总额与从国外收到的支付总额之间的关系。

Other countries can no longer get gold for dollars from the United States, but they can exchange dollars for US goods. As the supply and demand for US goods fluctuates, the supply and demand for US currency fluctuates also, changing its relative price. Thus, one month you might be able to buy a British pound for $1.60, and the next month it might cost $1.70. In that case, the value of the dollar has fallen, since the pound that previously cost $1.60 now costs $1.70. In a perfectly flexible exchange rate system, the balance of payments must always be in equilibrium. Put another way, the supply of currency must always equal the demand for that currency. This follows from the definition of balance of payments as the relation of total payments made abroad to total payments received from abroad, which we discussed earlier.

事实上,尽管美国的汇率制度总体上是一个浮动汇率制度,但它并非完全灵活。美国和其他国家时不时地会进入外汇市场,试图抬高或压低美元的价值。这使得我们的汇率制度变成了一种“肮脏浮动” ——一种部分浮动的汇率制度,通过这种制度,美元的汇率时不时地会贬值。

Actually, although the US exchange rate system is generally a flexible rate system, it is not perfectly flexible. Every so often, the United States and other countries enter into the foreign exchange markets to attempt to raise or lower the value of the dollar. This makes our exchange rate system a dirty float—a partially flexible exchange rate system through which every so

政府通常会进入外汇市场来影响汇率。在某些情况下,一个国家会试图在很长一段时间内显著影响其货币价值。中国就是一个很好的例子。近年来,为了压低人民币汇率,从而鼓励出口,中国购买了大量美元和以美元计价的资产,这增加了对美元的需求,从而使美元价值高于原本应有的水平。美国反对中国的这一政策,称其为货币操纵,中国政府也减少了购买美元的数量。

often the government enters into the foreign exchange market to affect the exchange rate. In some instances, a country attempts to significantly influence the value of its currency for a long period of time. China is a case in point. In recent times, in order to hold the value of its currency, the yuan, down, and thereby encourage exports, China bought large amounts of dollars and dollar-denominated assets, which increased the demand for dollars and thereby held the value of the dollar higher than it otherwise would have been. The United States has objected to this Chinese policy, calling it currency manipulation, and the Chinese government has reduced the amount of dollars it buys.

图20.1美元价值的波动。资料来源:美联储系统和作者推断

Figure 20.1Fluctuations in the value of the dollar. (Source: Federal Reserve System and author extrapolation)

美元价值的波动情况如图20.1所示。可以看到,美元价值近期经历了过山车式波动。尽管美元价值有所波动,但总体趋势可能会下降。这种趋势可能会持续到美国贸易逆差消除为止。

Fluctuations in the value of the dollar can be seen in Figure 20.1. You can see that the value of the dollar has recently been on a roller-coaster ride. Although the value fluctuates, the general trend of the dollar value will likely be down. This trend is likely to continue until the US trade deficit is eliminated.

国际收支和贸易差额

Balance of Payments and Balance of Trade

既然我们已经向您介绍了外汇市场,让我们来看看贸易术语。在讨论国际贸易时,经常使用两个术语:贸易平衡国际收支贸易平衡是指我们的总出口与总进口之间的关系。它告诉我们出口和进口之间的美元差额。图 20.2显示,自 1970 年代以来,美国一直存在贸易逆差。这一赤字在 21 世纪初大幅增加,但随着 2008 年的经济衰退而有所下降。贸易逆差是累积的;它们代表着美国未来的债务义务。这些债务义务不断增长,如今美国是世界上最大的债务国。其中很大一部分债务是欠中国的,在美国一直出现贸易逆差的同时,中国一直保持贸易顺差。

Now that we’ve introduced you to foreign exchange markets, let’s turn to the terminology of trade. In discussing international trade, two terms are used frequently: the balance of trade and the balance of payments. Balance of trade refers to the relation of our total exports to our total imports. It tells us the dollar difference between exports and imports. Figure 20.2 shows that the United States has had a balance of trade deficit since the 1970s. That deficit significantly increased in the early 2000s but then decreased somewhat with the recession of 2008. The balance-of-trade deficits are cumulative; they represent the debt obligations of the United States going into the future. These debt obligations are growing, and today the United States is by far the largest debtor nation in the world. A significant amount of this debt is owed to China, which has been running balance-of-trade surpluses as the United States has been running balance-of-trade deficits.

国际收支平衡是指对外支付总额与从国外收到总额之比。它不仅包括商品和服务贸易,还包括国家间货币流动,例如贷款和投资。尽管近期贸易逆差出现,但国际收支平衡并未出现逆差,因为贸易逆差正被大量流入美国的外国资本所抵消。

Balance of payments refers to the relation of total payments made abroad to total payments received from abroad. It includes not only traded goods and services but also currency flows, such as loans and investments, among countries. Even though the balance of trade has been in deficit recently, the balance of payments has not, because the trade imbalance is being offset by large foreign capital inflows into the United States.

我们可以以美国2007年的状况来理解国际收支和贸易收支之间的差异,当时美国的贸易逆差超过5000亿美元。然而,与此同时,外国投资者在美国进行了大量投资,主要以债券的形式。因此,由于国际收支包含了这些资金流动,即使贸易逆差为逆差,国际收支也并非如此,而是保持平衡。

The difference between the balance of payments and the balance of trade can be seen by considering the US position in 2007 when it ran a balance-of-trade deficit of over $500 billion. However, at that same time, foreigners were investing heavily in the United States, largely in the form of bonds. Therefore, because the balance of payments includes these financial flows, even though the balance of trade was in deficit, the balance of payments was not; it was balanced.

图20.2美国贸易逆差:过去四十年来,美国贸易一直处于逆差状态。(来源:美国经济分析局)

Figure 20.2US trade deficits: the United States has run deficits in its balance of trade for the last forty years. (Source: Bureau of Economic Analysis)

贸易逆差被资本顺差抵消并不意味着我们不必担心国际贸易逆差。当外国资金投资于美国时,外国人会获得美国资产,并在未来获得利息和利润。他们也可以决定不再持有美国资产,在这种情况下,美元价值可能会大幅下跌。美元贬值将使外国商品在美国更加昂贵,而美国商品在海外则更加便宜。这些变化最终将消除美国的贸易逆差,但也意味着美国公民将为其消费的商品支付更多费用。

The fact that trade flow deficits are offset by capital flow surpluses does not mean we do not have to worry about the international trade deficit. When foreign money is invested in the United States, foreigners acquire US assets and will be paid interest and profits from them in the future. They also can decide to no longer hold their assets in the United States, in which case the value of the dollar can fall substantially. A fall in the value of the dollar will make foreign goods more expensive in the United States and make US goods cheaper abroad. Combined, these changes will eventually eliminate the US trade deficit, but they also will mean that US citizens will pay more for the goods they consume.

许多人在思考进出口时,脑海中浮现的只是看得见的贸易项目——例如小麦、钢琴或机械等物质商品。但认为对外贸易仅由这些商品构成是误导,因为所谓的“无形商品”也同样重要。

Many people, when they think of imports and exports, have in mind only the visible items of trade—material goods such as wheat, pianos, or machinery. But to think of foreign trade as consisting of these alone is misleading, because the so-called invisible items are just as important.

无形贸易项目包括一国人民向另一国人民支付的各种服务。例如,在正常年份,我们向英国公民和其他外国人支付巨额运费,用于将美国货物运上他们的船只和飞机。来自美国的游客也向英国公民、法国公民、意大利公民和其他国家支付巨额费用,用于支付他们在本国的酒店住宿和交通费用。这些项目与进口咖啡或鞋子一样,真正体现了海外购买。另一个重要的无形贸易项目是美国人从外国投资中获得的利息。这是允许外国人使用我们资本的报酬,这与他们允许我们使用他们的酒店房间一样,是一种真正的服务。居住在美国的非美国籍工人向家乡的亲朋好友汇款也是无形贸易项目的例子。移民群体(如果社区成员与祖国保持密切联系,也称为侨民)汇出的资金远远超过了全球对外援助的总额。

Invisible items of trade consist of services of all sorts for which the people of one country pay those of another. For example, in normal years, we pay British citizens and other foreigners large amounts in freight charges for carrying US goods on their ships and planes. Tourists from the United States also pay British citizens, French citizens, Italians, and others, large sums to buy hotel accommodations and transportation in their countries. Such items represent purchases abroad just as truly as do imports of coffee or shoes. Another important invisible item of trade is the interest Americans receive from foreign investments. This is payment for permitting foreigners to use our capital, something that is just as truly a service as their permitting us to use their hotel rooms. Capital remittances sent by non-US workers living in the United States to their friends and families back home are another example of an invisible trade item. These flows sent by migrant communities (also called diasporas if the community members maintain close ties to their homelands) far exceed the total level of foreign aid in the world.

国际贸易的优点和缺点

Advantages and Disadvantages of International Trade

贸易是现代经济的命脉,国际贸易的益处如此巨大,以至于难以想象一个现代国家会采取完全的经济孤立政策。机械的充分利用及其伴随的专业化分工需要大规模生产,而大规模生产则需要在广阔的市场中进行广泛的贸易。为了限制市场将一个产业转移到一个国家通常意味着效率降低和成本上升。此外,现代社会需要各种各样的商品,既用于消费,也用于工业原材料,包括茶叶、咖啡、棉花、橡胶、石油、铁、锰、铝、镍、钴——完整的清单很长。没有哪个国家拥有或能够生产所有这些产品。缺少的产品只能通过贸易获得。当国家之间贸易自由流动时,世界往往会变得更加繁荣。当贸易萎缩时,生产就会滞后,失业率上升,世界收入就会缩水。

Trade is the lifeblood of a modern economy, and the benefits of international trade are so great that it is inconceivable that a modern nation would adopt a policy of complete economic isolation. The full utilization of machinery, with its attendant specialization, requires mass production, and mass production calls for extensive trade in very wide markets. To limit the market of an industry to one country would often mean reduced efficiency and higher costs. Also, modern society requires a great variety of goods, both for consumption and as raw materials for its industries, including tea, coffee, cotton, rubber, petroleum, iron, manganese, aluminum, nickel, cobalt—a complete list would be long indeed. No country has or can produce all of these products. The missing ones can be obtained only through trade. When trade flows freely between countries, the world tends to become more prosperous. When trade languishes, production lags, unemployment increases, and the world’s income shrinks.

贸易的三大优势

Three Advantages of Trade

国际贸易有三个主要优势。首先,它使一个国家能够获得其国内根本无法生产,或无法以可接受的成本足量生产的产品。有时,一个国家无法生产某些产品是气候原因,例如美国种植茶叶和咖啡的困难。在其他情况下,则是由于缺乏某些自然资源。例如,意大利没有优质的煤炭资源,而英国没有足够的优质农田来满足其粮食需求。

There are three primary advantages of international trade. The first is that it enables a country to obtain products that cannot be produced at home at all or that cannot be produced in adequate quantities and at acceptable costs. Sometimes the inability of a country to produce certain things is a matter of climate, such as the difficulty in growing tea and coffee in the United States. In other cases, it is a lack of certain natural resources. Italy, for example, has no good coal deposits, and Britain does not have enough good farmland to meet its demands for food.

国际贸易的第二个优势是,它通常能使一个国家获得比国内生产更好的产品。这可能是由于气候、土壤或自然资源的差异。然而,有时也归因于某些国家的人民经过长期积累,掌握了某些不易转让的技术。多年来,英国工厂生产的羊毛制品比大多数美国工厂更精细,因为他们世世代代都专注于精细羊毛制品的生产。

The second advantage of international trade is that it often enables a country to get a better product than can be produced at home. This maybe due to differences in climate and soil or to differences in natural resources. Sometimes, however, it is owing to the fact that the people of some foreign countries have, over a long period of time, acquired certain techniques that are not easily transferred. British factories for years produced finer woolens than most US factories because they had specialized in fine woolens for generations.

国际贸易的第三个优势是,它通常能以低于国内生产的价格提供产品。这通过提高消费者的购买力来提高生活水平。这得益于比较优势,即某些国家更适合生产某种商品,而非另一种商品。当一个国家专注于其具有比较优势的产品时,它能够利用其现有资源以更低的价格生产该产品,从而降低产品价格。设想一下像英国这样的国家,其粮食产量仅占其所需粮食供应的一半左右。可以想象,英国或许能够在国内生产足够的粮食来养活其人民。为了生产所有粮食,它必须更加集约地耕种肥沃的土地,尽管存在收益递减的趋势;它还必须利用不太适合农业的劣质土地。这两种方法都成本高昂,导致价格高昂。从长远来看,英国可以通过向国外销售工业品并大量购买粮食来提高其人民的生活水平。

A third advantage of international trade is that it often makes products available at a lower price than would be possible if they were produced at home. This raises standards of living by increasing consumer purchasing power. This is made possible through comparative advantage, which is the fact that some countries are better suited to the production of one good than to the production of another good. When a country specializes in the product in which it has a comparative advantage, it is able to produce the good at a cheaper price due to its available resources, and can therefore charge less for the product. Consider a country like Great Britain that produces only about half of its needed food supply. Conceivably, Britain might be able to raise enough food within its own borders to feed its people. To raise all of its food, it would have to cultivate its good land more intensively, in spite of the tendency toward diminishing returns; it would also have to resort to inferior land not really suitable for agriculture. Both methods are expensive and result in high prices. In the long run, Britain can provide its people with better standards of living by selling industrial goods and buying a substantial portion of its food supply abroad.

贸易的弊端

Disadvantages of Trade

如果国际贸易只有好处,那么国家之间就会进行自由贸易,而且关于如何处理国际贸易的争论也不会那么激烈。然而,由于争论十分激烈,因此国际贸易显然存在一些缺点。为了说明这些缺点,让我们考虑一些例子。比如说,中国开始生产在美国售价为 12,000 美元的汽车。这将使制造汽车的中国人和美国汽车消费者受益,但却会严重损害一组生产者(美国汽车公司)和一组工人(美国汽车工人)的利益。其他例子还有很多。进口土豆有利于美国消费者,但会损害缅因州和爱达荷州的土豆生产商;从孟加拉国进口纺织品有利于美国消费者,但会损害美国的纺织企业。

If international trade had only advantages, there would be free trade among nations and little debate over what to do about international trade. There is significant debate, however, so obviously there must be some disadvantages to international trade. To see these disadvantages, let’s consider some examples. Say, for instance, that China began building automobiles that would sell in the United States for $ 12,000. This would benefit the Chinese who make the automobiles and US consumers of automobiles, but it would hurt one group of producers—US automobile companies— and one group of workers—US automobile workers—a lot. Other examples abound. Importing potatoes helps US consumers but hurts Maine and Idaho potato producers; importing textiles from Bangladesh helps US consumers but hurts textile firms here in the United States.

当我们将两组人放在一起考察时,我们会发现,在大多数人眼中,国际贸易的收益几乎总是大于成本,但收益却分摊到了大多数人身上,而成本却被强加给了少数人。那些少数受损者会大声反对国际竞争,因此在美国,就像在大多数国家一样,往往存在着鼓励出口、抑制进口的倾向。抱怨者们会提出类似以下的论点:进口产品剥夺了美国生产商原本可以获得的利润和工资,而这些利润和工资原本是他们在美国国内生产的。

When we look at both groups together, we see that, in most people’s eyes, the benefits of international trade almost always outweigh the costs, but the benefits are spread over a large group of people, whereas the costs are imposed on a few. Those few who are hurt express their opposition to international competition loudly, and so in the United States, as in most countries, there is often a tendency to encourage exports and discourage imports. The complainers argue something like the following: Imports rob US producers of the profits and wages they might have received had these goods been produced at home.

为什么经济学家普遍支持自由贸易

Why Economists Generally Support Free Trade

认为美国生产商作为一个群体因外国采购而受损的想法是错误的。从长远来看,美国只有从其他国家购买商品,才能向其他国家销售商品。他们。虽然我们或许能为部分美国工人的产品赢得国内市场,但这是以其他美国工人的产品失去国外市场为代价的。对整个国家而言,这两件事相互抵消,而贸易限制的长期最终结果是美国消费者支付更高的价格或收到劣质商品。

The notion that US producers as a group are injured by foreign purchases is a fallacy. In the long run, the United States can sell goods to other countries only if it also buys goods from them. Though we may gain home markets for the products of some US workers, we do this only at the expense of losing foreign markets for the products of other US workers. For the country as a whole, these two things cancel each other out, and the long-term net result of restrictions on trade is that US consumers pay higher prices or receive inferior goods.

标准化的集装箱运输促进了国际贸易的发展。

International trade is expedited by standardized container shipping.

为什么你不能只获得优势而不承担劣势

Why You Can't Get the Advantages Without the Disadvantages

为什么我们只有从其他国家购买商品,才能向他们出售商品?简而言之,原因在于,从长远来看,外国只有用自己出售的商品才能支付购买的商品。让我们尽可能简单地解释一下进口如何支付出口,反之亦然。为简单起见,我们首先假设贸易仅发生在英国和美国之间。

Why is it that we can sell goods to other countries only if we also buy goods from them? Briefly, the reason is that, in the long run, foreign countries can pay for what they buy only with the goods they sell. Let us explain as simply as possible how imports pay for exports, and vice versa. For simplicity, we first assume that trade takes place only between Britain and the United States.

假设某时一位英国进口商想购买价值100万美元的美国机器。出售这些机器的美国公司不太可能需要英镑,或者说英镑。他们更想要美元。因此,为了购买这些机器,这位英国进口商必须找到某种方法将英镑兑换成美元——也就是说,找到一个拥有美元并愿意将其兑换成英镑的人。

Suppose that at a certain time a British importer wishes to buy $1 million worth of US machinery. The US firms that have this machinery for sale are unlikely to want British money, or pounds sterling. Rather, they want dollars. Therefore, in order to buy the machinery, the British importer must find some way to change British money into dollars—that is, to find someone who has dollars and who is willing to sell them in exchange for pounds.

谁会持有美元并愿意将其兑换成英镑?他们大多分为两类:(1) 美国人需要英镑来购买英国的商品或服务;(2) 英国出口商接受美元支票或汇票,以换取他们卖给美国人的英国商品。无论哪种情况,英国人购买美国商品所需的美元来源,都来自于美国人已经支付或计划支付的英国商品款项。

Who will have dollars and be willing to exchange them for pounds? For the most part, they can be found in two groups: (1) Americans who want pounds in order to buy goods or services from Britain, and (2) British exporters who have accepted checks or draffs in dollars for British goods that they have sold to Americans. In either case, the source of the dollars available to the British to buy American goods is the payments Americans have made, or plan to make, for British goods.

如果出于某种原因,美国对英国商品的进口量下降,英国将被迫减少对美国商品的购买量,因为他们无法再获得足够的美元来购买之前的数量。

If for any reason US imports of British goods should decline, the British would be forced to curtail their purchases of US goods because they could no longer obtain sufficient dollars to buy in the previous volume.

上述解释忽略了一些复杂的因素。实际上,正如我们之前讨论过的,英国进口商并不直接向英国出口商获取美元资金。银行充当中间人。如果英国出口商接受以美国银行开具的美元价值支票付款,他们这样做是因为他们可以将支票带到自己的银行兑换。把这些支票兑换成英镑,存入自己的账户。然后,他们的银行可以把这些支票存入纽约的银行,再把美元汇票卖给需要这些汇票来支付美国商品的英国进口商。

The preceding explanation disregards certain complicating factors. Actually, as we discussed earlier, British importers do not go directly to British exporters to obtain US money. The banks act as middlemen. If British exporters accept in payment dollar-value checks drawn on US banks, they do so because they can take them to their own banks and there exchange them for pounds sterling and deposit them to their own accounts. Their banks can then deposit these checks in New York banks and sell dollar drafts to British importers who need them in order to pay for US goods.

我们的解释忽略的另一个因素是,贸易并非仅仅发生在英国和美国之间。其他国家也参与其中。例如,英国出口商可能因在美国销售纺织品而获得美元,而英国进口商又可能用这些美元在阿根廷购买牛肉。阿根廷进口商随后可以用这些美元在美国购买机器。在这种情况下,我们花在英国纺织品上的美元使得阿根廷人能够购买我们的机器。

Another factor that our explanation disregards is that trade does not take place just between Britain and the United States. Other countries come into the picture. For example, British exporters might receive dollars for textiles sold in the United States, and British importers might in turn use these dollars to buy beef in Argentina. The dollars would then be available to Argentine importers to buy machinery in the United States. In this case, the dollars we spent for British textiles made it possible for Argentines to buy our machinery.

最后一个限定条件是时间维度。从长期来看,任何国家的进口都必须等于其出口。然而,从短期来看,这种说法必须加以限定。在相当长的一段时间内,一个国家从另一个国家购买的商品可能远远超过其出口,反之亦然。这种情况可能有两个原因:(1) 各国可能拥有黄金、储备货币或金融资产储备,并愿意将其作为购买款项支付给我们;(2) 各国可能愿意赊销商品。美国过去三十年来一直处于这种境地。美国以外的人们一直愿意持有美元和以美元计价的资产,这使得美国的进口量远远超过美国的出口量。然而,这种情况不可能无限期地持续下去,我们可以预期,未来几年情况将发生变化,并可能引发一场重大的国际货币危机。

A final qualification is the time dimension. In the long run, any country’s imports must equal its exports. In the short run, however, this statement must be qualified. Over considerable periods of time, one country may be able to buy substantially more from another country than it sells, or vice versa. This can happen for two reasons: (1) countries may have stocks of gold, reserve currencies, or financial assets that they are willing to send us in payment for their purchases, and (2) countries may be willing to sell goods on credit. This is the position that the United States has been in for the last three decades. People outside the United States have been willing to hold dollars and dollar-denominated assets, which has allowed US imports to greatly exceed US exports. However, this cannot continue indefinitely, and we can expect the situation to change in the coming years, probably with a major international currency crisis.

国际贸易限制

Restrictions on International Trade

我们已经看到,国际贸易具有显著的优势,而且在大多数情况下,如果各国允许自由贸易,就能从国际贸易中获得最大的经济利益。然而,这并非惯常做法;相反,各国实施了各种管制措施。这些管制措施包括出口补贴、关税、配额、外汇管制以及双边易货协定。过去,关税一直是规范贸易的主要手段,但近年来,其他管制手段,尤其是配额,的重要性日益凸显。

We have seen that there are significant advantages to international trade, and in most cases nations would derive the greatest economic advantage from international trade if they allowed free trade. This, however, is not the usual practice; instead, numerous controls are applied. These controls include subsidies on exports, tariffs, quotas, exchange controls, and bilateral barter agreements. In the past, tariffs have been the principal device for regulating trade, but in recent years other methods of control, especially quotas, have assumed greatly increased importance.

这些管制措施的原因与经济与政治的关系有关。如前所述,贸易的益处在消费者中广泛传播,他们视其为理所当然。而贸易成本则落在相对较小的群体身上,而且往往对其造成相当严重的影响,导致那些缺乏竞争力的企业倒闭,进而意味着其员工失业。通常情况下,即使总成本低于总收益,政客们也会听取少数受害者的意见,并制定法律来保护他们。因此,贸易限制的压力持续存在。我们现在来探讨其中的一些。

The reason for these controls has to do with how economics relates to politics. As stated earlier, the benefits of trade are spread widely among consumers, who simply take the benefits for granted. The costs fall on a relatively small group and often affect them rather severely, causing firms that cannot compete to go out of business, which means that their workers lose their jobs. Often, even though the total costs are less than the total benefits, politicians will listen to, and make laws to protect, the few who are hurt. Therefore, there is continual pressure for trade restrictions. We now consider some of these.

进口关税

Tariffs on Imports

关税是一种税,通常指对进口商品征收的税。当关税以每桶或每码的固定费用征收时,被称为从价税。当关税以商品价值的百分比征收时,被称为从价税(增值税)。关税通常有两个目的:要么增加收入,要么通过阻止外国竞争对手的产品进入国内市场来保护国内产业市场。在某种程度上,这两个目的是不相容的,因为完全阻止外国产品进入的关税根本不会产生任何收入。然而,在实践中,保护性关税很少高到足以完全排除进口,从而确实增加一些收入。但如果关税的主要目的是增加收入,那么它就不应该高到阻碍大多数进口。此外,与其对国内外都生产的商品征收关税,不如尽可能对国内无法生产的商品征收关税。这样可以消除由于买家转向国内生产商而导致进口和收入下降的可能性。

A tariff is a tax, or duty, usually on an imported commodity. When tariff duties are levied as a fixed charge per barrel or yard, they are said to be specific. When they are levied as a percentage of the value of a commodity, they are said to be ad valorem (value-added). A tariff generally has one of two purposes: either to raise revenue or to protect the market of a domestic industry by keeping out the products of foreign competitors. To a degree, these two purposes are incompatible because a tariff that would keep the foreign product out entirely would raise no revenue at all. In practice, however, protective tariffs are seldom high enough to exclude imports completely and hence do raise some revenue. But if the chief purpose of a tariff is to raise revenue, it should not be high enough to discourage most imports. Further, instead of being levied on a commodity produced both at home and abroad, it should, if possible, be levied on one that cannot be produced at home. This eliminates the possibility that imports and revenues may fall off because buyers turn to home producers.

虽然征收关税在一定程度上会干扰贸易,但这并非其目的,而且这种干扰通常被控制在最低限度。征收关税与自由贸易政策并非相悖。至于它是否是一种理想的税种,则是另一个问题。我们可以指出,除非主要针对奢侈品征收,否则它与销售税有着相同的弊端——即其负担更重地落在低收入人群身上,而不是富裕人群身上。征收关税的主要理由并非在于它能创造收入;而在于人们相信,阻止人们购买海外商品并迫使他们在国内购买符合公众利益。大多数经济学家反对这种观点,并反对征收保护性关税以及设置其他旨在限制竞争、维持或抬高价格的贸易壁垒。对国会听证会和辩论的研究表明,保护性关税几乎总是迫于来自对特定产品生产感兴趣的商业和劳工团体的政治压力而制定的,他们期望从外国竞争的减少中获益。

Although tariffs for revenue interfere with trade to some extent, that is not their purpose, and such interference is usually kept at a minimum. Their use is in no sense incompatible with a policy of free trade. Whether they represent a desirable kind of tax is another question, and we might point out that, unless they are levied chiefly on luxuries, they have the same drawback as a sales tax—namely, their burden falls more heavily on people of low income than on the well-to-do. The primary argument for tariffs is not that they generate revenue; rather it is a belief that it is in the public interest to keep people from buying goods abroad and to force them to buy at home. Most economists reject that argument and oppose the levying of protective tariffs and the setting up of other trade barriers designed to limit competition and maintain or raise prices. Studies of congressional hearings and debates indicate that protective tariffs are nearly always enacted as a result of political pressure from business and labor groups interested in the production of a certain product, and who expect to benefit from a reduction of foreign competition.

反对保护性关税的理由反对保护性关税的基本论点是,通过限制国际贸易,它们剥夺了我们部分贸易利益。反对关税的第二个论点是,进口自由准入扩大了国内产业的海外市场,因为正是我们进口商品的支付,为外国人提供了购买我们出口商品的大部分资金。

The Case Against Protective Tariffs The basic argument against protective tariffs is that, by restricting international trade, they rob us of part of its benefits. A second argument against tariffs is that free admission of imports expands the foreign markets of home industries because it is payments for our imports that furnish foreigners with most of the funds with which to buy our exports.

反对关税的第三个论点是,当一个国家制定关税时,其他国家很可能会效仿。其结果将导致贸易螺旋式萎缩,使所有国家的状况都恶化。这正是1929年至1933年大萧条时期发生的情况(见图20.3)。随着一个又一个国家为了保护国内就业而制定关税——美国制定了臭名昭著的《斯姆特-霍利关税法》——贸易下滑,整个世界陷入了严重的经济萧条。

A third argument against tariffs is that when one country institutes tariffs, it is likely that other countries will follow. The result will be a contracting spiral of trade, making all countries worse off. That is precisely what happened in the Great Depression from 1929 to 1933 (see Figure 20.3). As one country after another instituted tariffs to protect jobs at home—the United States instituted the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff—trade declined, and the entire world fell into a serious economic depression.

支持保护性关税的论点保护性关税的支持者用许多看似合理的论点来支持他们的观点:国内市场论点、高工资论点、幼稚产业论点和自给自足论点。

The Arguments in Favor of Protective Tariffs The advocates of protective tariffs support their point of view with a number of plausible arguments: the home-market argument, the highwages argument, the infant-industry argument, and the self-sufficiency argument.

国内市场论点保护主义者最有力的论据之一就是国内市场论点。根据这一推理,阻止外国商品进入的关税扩大了美国商品的市场,从而增加了国内利润和就业。毫无疑问,如果我们只考虑短期,这种论点有一定道理,但正如我们已经指出的,最终结果是,一些商品建立了国内市场,而另一些商品则失去了国外市场。国外市场的丧失来得更快,因为当我们提高对其商品的关税时,其他国家也会采取报复措施,提高对我们商品的关税。与此同时,正如我们所看到的,美国消费者支付更高的价格或收到劣质产品。

Home-Market Argument One of the most effective of the claims made by the protectionists is the home-market argument. According to this reasoning, a tariff that keeps out foreign goods increases the market for US goods and thereby increases home profits and employment. Undoubtedly, there is some truth in this contention if we consider only short periods of time, but, as we have already pointed out, the final result is that a home market is created for some goods at the expense of losing a foreign market for others. This loss of the foreign market comes all the faster because, when we raise our tariffs on their goods, other countries retaliate by raising their tariffs on our goods. Meanwhile, as we have seen, US consumers pay higher prices or receive inferior products.

图20.31929年至1933年世界贸易螺旋式萎缩。75个国家的进口总额(以旧美元金币计算,以百万计)。(来源:国际联盟原图)

Figure 20.3The contracting spiral of world trade, 1929 to 1933. Total imports of seventy-five countries (monthly values in terms of old US gold dollars in millions). (Source: Original diagram by League of Nations)

高工资论点 贸易保护主义者提出的第二个主张是高工资论点。他们声称,关税通过保护美国工人免于与廉价的外国劳动力竞争,维持了美国的工资水平和生活水平。这个论点也似乎有理,但稍加分析和观察就会发现它的力量大打折扣。首先,如果关税使得工资上涨成为可能,那它只是通过使生产者能够以更高的价格出售其产品来实现的。这可能使一部分雇主和工人受益,但却降低了所有其他必须购买该产品的人的购买力和生活水平。如果这种提价适用于大量产品,那么生活水平的普遍下降可能会非常严重。

High-Wages Argument A second claim that protectionists make is expressed by the high-wages argument. They assert that the tariff maintains the US wage level and the US standard of living by protecting our workers from having to compete with cheap foreign labor. This argument is also plausible, but a little analysis and observation robs it of much of its force. In the first place, if a tariff makes possible higher wages, it does so only by enabling producers to sell their products at a higher price. This may benefit one group of employers and workers, but it reduces the purchasing power and standard of living of all others who must buy the product. If this kind of price raising were applied to a great many products, the general reduction in standards of living might be serious.

幼稚产业论证保护性关税的第三个辩护是幼稚产业论证。主张这一论点的人往往声称,他们无意为一个离不开保护就无法生存的产业提供永久的关税保护。但他们却认为,美国一个新兴的小型产业不可能指望像国外一个老牌成熟产业那样以低廉的成本进行生产。我们应该给予它保护,直到它能够站稳脚跟并发展壮大。最终,它可能会比外国竞争对手更高效。如果这样,它就能以更低的价格为消费者提供商品,届时就不再需要关税保护了。

Infant-Industry Argument A third defense of the protective tariff is the infant-industry argument. Those who advance it often disclaim any wish to give permanent tariff protection to an industry not able to survive without it. But, they say, a small new industry in the United States cannot hope to produce at as low a cost as an old, established industry abroad. Let us give it protection until it can get established and grow. Eventually, it may become more efficient than its foreign competitors. If so, it can provide consumers with goods at reduced prices, and it will no longer need tariff protection.

幼稚产业论在美国曾一度被提出,以支持征收关税来保护各种产业。理论上,该论据站得住脚,但很难找到任何明确案例证明其成功应用——即某个产业因关税保护而建立,然后在没有此类保护的情况下也能成功持续发展。

The infant-industry argument has been advanced in the United States at one time or another in support of tariffs to protect various industries. In theory it is sound, but it is difficult to find any clear case in which it has been successfully applied—that is, where an industry has been established as a result of tariff protection and then has continued successfully without such protection.

自给自足论证保护性关税的最后一个论据是,它能使一个国家更加自给自足,从而减少战时对外国必需品的依赖。这一论点在理论上站得住脚,但在实践中能够有效应用的情况可能相当有限。尽管二战的经验强调了拥有可靠重要原材料供应的重要性,但通过关税将这些产品挡在国门之外并不总是能促进国内生产。此外,许多曾经被视为必需品的产品如今由于替代品的大幅改进而变得不那么重要了。羊毛、锡和天然橡胶就是常见的例子。

Self-Sufficiency Argument A final argument for protective tariffs is that they make a country more self-sufficient and thus less dependent on foreign countries for essential commodities in time of war. This argument is sound in theory, but the situations to which it can usefully be applied in practice are probably rather limited. Though our experience in World War II emphasized the importance of having dependable supplies of vital raw materials, to keep such products out of the country by tariffs would not always result in building up home production. Moreover, many products once deemed essential are less so today because of greatly improved substitutes. Familiar examples are wool, tin, and natural rubber.

当战争时期真正面临战略物资短缺的危险时,最好的解决办法或许是增加储备。美国政府对多种矿产、贵金属和石油都采取了这一政策,但许多研究这一问题的人认为,这些储备大多毫无道理,是对纳税人金钱的浪费。

When there is real danger of a shortage of strategic materials in time of war, the best solution is probably to build up stockpiles. The US government has followed this policy with a number of minerals, precious metals, and oil, but many students of the problem believe that much of this stockpiling has been unjustified and is a waste of the taxpayers’ money.

进口配额

Import Quotas

保护国内产业的另一种手段是进口配额。进口配额限制了特定时期内可进口到一国的商品数量或价值。例如,政府可能决定将每年的糖进口量限制在200万吨,并可能决定将这一配额中的特定部分分配给特定的外国。

Another device for protecting home industries is the import quota. An import quota limits the quantity or the value of a commodity that can be brought into a country in a given period of time. For example, the government may decide to limit sugar imports to 2 million tons a year, and it may decide to assign definite parts of this quota to specified foreign countries.

许多自由贸易的倡导者认为配额比关税更令人反感。首先,虽然配额限制了贸易,但它不像关税那样能给进口国政府带来收入。但对于那些希望限制进口的人来说,配额比关税具有某些优势。配额通常不需要专门的立法,而是可以通过行政法令来强制执行或修改。此外,配额可以固定一定数量的商品进入,而如果征收保护性关税,则无法知道究竟有多少商品会进入。

Many advocates of freer trade consider quotas more objectionable than tariffs. For one thing, though quotas restrict trade, they bring no revenue to the government of the importing country as a tariff would. But for those who wish to restrict imports, quotas have certain advantages over tariffs. Often, they do not require special legislation but instead maybe imposed or changed by administrative decrees. Moreover, a quota can be fixed to admit a definite amount of a commodity, whereas if a protective tariff is levied, there is no way of knowing just how much of it will enter.

取消贸易限制

Removing Trade Restrictions

大多数经济学家认为,如果贸易能够自由安全地在世界范围内流动,贸易总量将大幅增长,从长远来看,所有国家都将更加繁荣。由于每个国家都能自由进入世界市场并获取原材料,关于贫困国家的讨论将减少,对外援助的需求也将减少。所有地方的消费品平均价格都将降低。没有什么比消除政府行为对世界贸易施加的大量限制更有利于世界贸易的扩张了。但正如我们之前所见,减少这些限制将是一个缓慢而曲折的过程。

Most economists believe that if trade could flow freely and securely through the world, there would be a great expansion of its total volume and that in the long run all nations would be more prosperous. There would be less talk of have-not countries and less need for foreign aid because every country would have free access to the markets and raw materials of the world. The average price of consumer goods would be lower everywhere. Nothing would contribute more to the expansion of world trade than removal of the great mass of restrictions that have been placed on it by government action. But as we saw earlier, decreasing these restrictions will be a slow and tortuous process.

世贸组织等支持贸易的组织经常面临强烈抗议。 © REUTERS/Alamy Stock Photo

Pro-trade organizations such as the WTO often face vigorous protests. © REUTERS/Alamy Stock Photo

1947年成立的《关税与贸易总协定》(GATT)是一项协议,大多数西方国家同意共同努力减少贸易壁垒。20世纪90年代中期,GATT被旨在促进全球贸易的世界贸易组织(WTO)取代。近年来,人们的注意力主要集中在区域贸易组织上,这些组织试图减少较小群体之间的贸易壁垒。国家。例如,涉及美国、加拿大和墨西哥的北美自由贸易协定(NAFTA,后来被特朗普总统更名为《美国-墨西哥-加拿大协定》)。在特朗普就任总统之前,美国正致力于与欧洲建立跨大西洋贸易与投资伙伴关系协定,并与亚洲国家建立跨太平洋伙伴关系协定。这些协定消除了成员国之间的贸易壁垒,并经常针对非成员国设立共同壁垒。

The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), established in 1947, was an agreement in which most Western nations agreed to a mutual effort to reduce trade barriers. In the mid-1990s, GATT was replaced by the World Trade Organization (WTO), an international organization designed to foster worldwide trade. More recently, much of the focus has been on regional trade organizations, which attempt to reduce trade barriers among a smaller group of countries. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA—subsequently renamed the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement by President Trump), involving the United States, Canada, and Mexico, is an example, and prior to Trump’s presidency the United States was working on establishing a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe, and a Trans-Pacific Partnership with countries in Asia. These agreements eliminate trade barriers among member countries and often establish common barriers against nonmember nations.

经济学家们通常支持自由贸易,但他们对这些联盟持有两种看法。他们支持联盟,因为联盟可以减少国家之间的壁垒,但他们担心这些联盟会使实现全球范围内减少壁垒变得更加困难。特朗普总统持截然不同的观点。他既反对这些国家集团之间的小型协议,也反对覆盖所有国家的大型贸易协定。他让美国退出了跨太平洋伙伴关系协定,并威胁要退出北美自由贸易协定,除非加拿大和墨西哥同意一项对美国更有利的协议。这导致北美自由贸易协定被略作修改并更名。他奉行反贸易政策,使美国偏离了全球化道路——即在生产、分配和金融方面整合世界各经济体。拜登总统遵循特朗普的反贸易政策,走上了一条折衷的道路,有时支持自由贸易,有时反对。

Economists, who generally favor free trade, are of two minds about these associations. They favor associations because they reduce barriers among countries, but they fear that the associations make it harder to achieve a worldwide reduction in barriers. President Trump took a quite different view. He opposed both these smaller agreements among a group of countries and large trade agreements covering all countries. He pulled the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and threatened to pull out of NAFTA, unless Canada and Mexico would agree to a better deal for the United States. This led to the NAFTA agreement being modified slightly and renamed. Following his anti-trade policies, he moved the United States away from its path of globalization—the integration of various world economies in terms of production, distribution, and finances Following Trumps anti-trade policies, President Biden has followed an eclectic path, sometimes supporting and sometime opposing free trade.

全球化

Globalization

全球化的发生源于各国纷纷采纳经济学家的政策建议,消除贸易壁垒,实现经济一体化。作为全球化的一部分,印度和中国的产量都实现了大幅增长,数十亿人的生活水平也得到了提高。尽管我们距离实现一个完全全球化的世界还有很长的路要走,在这个世界中,国际壁垒对世界贸易的影响将微乎其微,跨国公司也可以轻松地跨越国界,但我们已经朝着这个方向迈出了重要的一步。

Globalization has occurred as countries have followed economists’ policy suggestions to remove barriers to trade and integrate their economies. As part of globalization, both India and China have seen large increases in production, and billions of people have seen their standard of living improve. Although we are a long way from reaching a fully globalized world, in which international barriers would be of little importance to world trade, and global firms could move across national borders with ease, we have made significant strides in that direction.

跨国公司在扩大国际贸易方面发挥了重要作用,并在此过程中显著改变了国际经济环境。当一个国家的工人要求提高工资时,跨国公司很容易将生产转移到另一个工人愿意以较低工资工作的国家。例如,IBM 关闭了其在美国的许多生产设施,并将其转移到劳动力成本低得多的亚洲。随后,在 2004 年,它将其整个个人电脑业务出售给了一家中国公司——联想。许多其他公司也采取了同样的措施,导致美国制造业在过去几十年中一直处于低迷状态。在 21 世纪初,不仅制造业将工作岗位转移到了海外,服务业也同样如此。当您致电某家公司寻求技术帮助或购买商品时,您很可能会接通菲律宾或印度的接线员。

Global firms have played a major role in expanding international trade, and in doing so, they have significantly changed the international economic environment. When workers in one country demand higher wages, a global firm is in a position simply to transfer production to another country where workers are willing to work for lower wages. For instance, IBM closed many of its production facilities in the United States and moved them to Asia where labor costs were significantly lower. Then, in 2004, it sold its entire personal computer business to a Chinese company, Lenovo. Many other companies have done the same, and manufacturing in the United States has languished over the past decades. In the early 2000s, it was not only manufacturing industries that were transferring jobs abroad, but it was also service industries. When you phone a company for technical assistance or to buy something, you are likely to speak to an operator in the Philippines or India.

跨国公司以另一种方式影响贸易环境。例如,假设美国对日本汽车实施单方面配额。通过成为一家跨国公司并在美国建立生产或组装厂,一家日本公司可以规避配额,并在美国随心所欲地销售汽车。这正是20世纪80年代发生的事情,当时许多外国汽车制造商在美国建立了组装厂。在20世纪90年代末和21世纪初,正是总部位于美国的跨国公司在其他地方建立了生产设施。这让一些美国工人感到不安,他们觉得自己正在失去工作,而另一些人则认为这些公司是帝国主义的,向外国工人支付的工资低得令人无法接受。这些信念引发了反对全球化的示威活动,并可能在特朗普总统2016年的选举中发挥了一定作用,当时他承诺要让美国再次伟大,并带回那些因全球化而流失的蓝领制造业工作岗位。为此,他表示,他将比前几任总统更加开放,通过征收进口关税来保护国内就业,或直接通过配额限制进口。如前所述,大多数经济学家反对此类政策,他们指出,贸易的优势——商品成本降低——伴随着失业和其他贸易劣势。如果没有贸易和全球化,我们购买的许多商品——电脑、鞋子、衬衫、电话等等——的价格将会是现在的两倍、三倍甚至四倍,这会让我们变得更加贫穷。平均而言,贸易对参与的两个国家都有利;否则他们就不会参与贸易。尽管拜登总统更欢迎贸易谈判,但他也承诺采取一定程度的保护主义,以支持美国的制造业就业。美国一直在努力寻找平衡,认识到贸易是双向的,如果协议谈判顺利,所有参与国都可以受益。

Global corporations affect the trading environment in another way. Say, for instance, that the United States were to establish unilateral quotas for Japanese cars. By becoming a global company and establishing production or assembly plants in the United States, a Japanese company could avoid the quotas and sell as many cars in the United States as it wished. That is exactly what happened in the 1980s when a number of foreign-car producers established assembly plants in the United States. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was US-based global firms that were establishing production facilities elsewhere. This upset some US workers who felt they were losing their jobs and others who felt that the firms were being imperialistic and paying unacceptably low wages to their foreign workers. These beliefs led to demonstrations against globalization, and likely played a role in President Trumps victory in 2016, when he promised to make America great again and bring back blue collar manufacturing jobs that had been lost to globalization. To do that he stated that he would be much more open than previous presidents to protecting domestic jobs by establishing tariffs on imports, or to limiting imports directly by quotas. As discussed earlier, most economists oppose such policies, pointing out that job losses and other disadvantages of trade go along with the advantages of trade—the lower cost of goods. Were it not for trade and globalization, many of the goods we buy—the computers, shoes, shirts, telephones, and so on—would cost two, three, or four times as much, making us much poorer. On average, trade benefits both countries involved; otherwise they would not enter into the trade. Although President Biden is more welcoming to trade negotiations, he has also promised some degree of protectionism in order to support manufacturing jobs in the United States. The US is continually attempting to find a balance, recognizing that trade is a two-way street, and that it can benefit all countries involved if the deal is negotiated well.

全球化、贸易失衡和汇率

Globalization, Trade Imbalances, and Exchange Rates

既然我们已经讨论了汇率和贸易问题,现在我们准备探讨美国未来将因全球化及其一直以来的贸易失衡而经历的调整问题。目前,各国都接受美元(美国期票)来支付其商品和服务。如前所述,正是这种意愿使得美国在过去几十年里一直存在巨额贸易逆差。在未来的某个时候,各国将不再接受这些美元和期票,转而寻求美国的商品和服务。届时,美元可能会大幅贬值,尤其是相对于人民币和印度卢比而言。届时,中国和印度生产的商品在美国将变得更加昂贵(这将使美国公民的境况恶化),而美国商品在印度和中国将变得更加便宜(这将使两国公民的境况改善)。随着我们减少购买中国和印度的进口产品,而他们增加购买美国出口产品的数量,美国的贸易逆差将会消失,但在此过程中,美国的生活水平将不再像现在这样远高于世界其他地区。

Now that we’ve discussed both exchange rates and trade issues, we’re ready to address the question of the future adjustment that the United States will experience due to globalization and the trade imbalances it has been running. Currently, countries are accepting dollars (US promissory notes) for their goods and services. As discussed earlier, their willingness to do so has allowed the United States to run large trade deficits over the past few decades. At some point in the future, countries will stop accepting these US dollars and promissory notes and instead want goods and services from the United States. When that happens, the value of the dollar is likely to fall substantially, especially in reference to the Chinese currency, the yuan, and the Indian currency, the rupee. At that point, Chinese- and Indian-produced goods will become more expensive in this country (making US citizens less well off) and US goods will become cheaper in India and China (making their citizens better off). As we buy fewer Chinese and Indian imports, and as they buy more US exports, the US trade deficit will end, but in the process the United States will no longer have the enormously higher standard of living over the rest of the world that it currently enjoys.

结论

Conclusion

正如你所见,国际经济关系中有很多东西需要学习,而我们只是触及了皮毛。国际经济错综复杂,依赖国家间的信任和善意运作。如果各国各自为政,实施保护性关税和其他形式的保护主义,整个世界都可能受到影响。因此,合作在国际经济中与在国内经济中同样重要。

As you can see, there is much to be learned about international economic relations, and we have only touched the surface. The international economy is complicated and operates on faith and goodwill among nations. If countries each try to go their own way, instituting protective tariffs and other forms of protectionism, the entire world will likely suffer. Therefore, cooperation is as essential in the international economy as it is in the domestic economy.

国际经济问题之所以更加重要,是因为它们与国际政治关系密切相关。进行贸易的国家通常不会发生战争。因此,国际经济和政治关系很可能决定世界走向和平还是走向战争。

What makes international economic issues all the more important is their close relationship to international political relations. Countries that trade together generally do not fight wars. Thus, international economic and political relations will probably determine the direction the world takes in moving toward peace or moving toward war.

学习回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 在固定汇率制度下,货币间的相对价值由双方协商确定;在浮动汇率制度下,货币间的相对价值由市场决定。
  • In a fixed exchange rate system, the relative values of currencies are set by agreement; in a flexible exchange rate system, the relative values of currencies are set by the market.
  • 贸易差额是指我国出口总额与进口总额的关系。国际收支差额是指我国对外支付总额与从国外收到的支付总额的关系。
  • Balance of trade refers to the relation of our total exports to our total imports. Balance of payments refers to the relation of total payments made abroad to total payments received from abroad.
  • 贸易使一个国家能够以更低的成本获得更好的产品,但贸易也会损害这些产品的国内生产商。
  • Trade enables a country to obtain better products more cheaply, but trade can hurt the domestic producers of those products.
  • 保护性关税限制了国际贸易,并剥夺了我们的部分利益。这一论点遭到了国内市场论、高工资论、幼稚产业论和自给自足论的反驳。
  • Protective tariffs restrict international trade and rob us of part of its benefits. This argument is countered by the home-market argument, the high-wages argument, the infant-industry argument, and the self-sufficiency argument.
  • 美国是世界上最大的债务国;我们欠外国的债务比外国欠我们的债务多出数万亿美元。
  • Tire United States is the largest debtor nation in the world; we owe trillions of dollars more to foreigners than foreigners owe to us.
  • 美国巨大的贸易逆差最终将导致美元贬值,从而消除贸易不平衡。
  • Tire large US trade deficit will eventually lead to a fall in the value of the dollar, which will eliminate that trade imbalance.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 国际收支 (376)
  • balance of payments (376)
  • 贸易差额(376)
  • balance of trade (376)
  • 侨民 (377)
  • diasporas (377)
  • 脏浮动(374)
  • dirty float (374)
  • 固定汇率(373)
  • fixed exchange rate (373)
  • 灵活汇率(373)
  • flexible exchange rate (373)
  • 外汇(373)
  • foreign exchange (373)
  • 全球化(383)
  • globalization (383)
  • 金本位(373)
  • gold standard (373)
  • 进口配额(382)
  • import quota (382)
  • 国际货币基金组织(IMF)(374)
  • International Monetary Fund (IMF) (374)
  • 纸质标准 (374)
  • paper standard (374)
  • 关税 (380)
  • tariff (380)
  • 世界贸易组织(WTO) (382)
  • World Trade Organization (WTO) (382)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 外汇市场是什么意思?
  2. What is meant by the foreign exchange market?
  3. 为什么金本位制下外汇汇率稳定?
  4. Why were foreign exchange rates stable under the gold standard?
  5. 国际货币基金组织的宗旨是什么?
  6. What is the purpose of the International Monetary Fund?
  7. 为什么美元未来可能会贬值?美元贬值对美国以及中国、印度等发展中国家的生活水平会产生什么影响?
  8. Why will the value of the US dollar likely fall in the future, and what will that fall do to the relative standard of living in the United States and developing countries such as China and India?
  9. 国际贸易的三大优势是什么?它有哪些劣势?
  10. What are the three main advantages of international trade? What are some disadvantages?
  11. 出口依赖进口,进口依赖出口。为什么会这样?
  12. Exports depend on imports, and vice versa. Why is this true?
  13. 对于一个国家来说,发展有形贸易还是无形贸易更有利?请解释。
  14. Is it more desirable for a country to build up its visible or its invisible trade? Explain.
  15. 贸易顺差可能实现吗?它值得追求吗?请解释。
  16. Is a favorable balance of trade possible? Is it desirable? Explain.
  17. 大多数经济学家是否支持使用关税来保护美国就业的政策?
  18. Did most economists support policies that used tariffs to protect American jobs?
  19. 近期,使用配额限制进口的做法愈演愈烈。进口配额对消费者的损害是否小于关税?原因何在?
  20. The use of quotas to limit imports has been spreading recently. Are import quotas less damaging to consumers than tariffs? Why or why not?
  21. 一个国家可以通过哪些方式弥补对外支出超过对外收入的过剩?它能无限期地弥补这种过剩吗?请解释。
  22. In what ways can a country meet an excess of foreign payments over foreign receipts? Can it meet such an excess indefinitely? Explain.

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 访问www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/treasury-reporting-rates-exchange/查询最近一天以及一年前美元兑欧元的汇率。汇率是如何变化的?
  2. Look up the exchange rate at www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/treasury-reporting-rates-exchange/ for US dollars to the euro for the latest date and then for a year before. How did the rate change?
  3. 从www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/index.html上的美国人口普查数据中,选择一个国家,然后计算出美国现在、2008 年和 2000 年与该国的贸易平衡情况。
  4. From US census data at www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/index.html, pick a country and find the US trade balance with that country now, in 2008, and in 2000.
  5. 使用美国国际贸易委员会的数据库http://dataweb.usitc.gov/tarifF/database,查找每升啤酒的关税。为什么有两种不同的关税税率?
  6. Using http://dataweb.usitc.gov/tarifF/database, the US International Trade Commission’s database, find out what the tariff is per liter of beer. Why are there two different tariff rates?
  7. 根据世界银行网站http://www.worldbank.org/en/about,世界银行的主要目标和使命是什么?
  8. According to the World Bank website, http://www.worldbank.org/en/about, what are the World Bank’s main goals and missions?
  9. 请访问www.nytimes.com/video/business/100000005788184/what-bananas-tell-us-about-tradewars.html观看视频。“香蕉战争”是什么?它揭示了WTO的哪些力量?
  10. Go to www.nytimes.com/video/business/100000005788184/what-bananas-tell-us-about-tradewars.html, and watch the video. What was the “banana war” and what does it tell us about the power of the WTO?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 伯恩斯坦,威廉,《辉煌的交流:贸易如何塑造世界》纽约:大西洋月刊出版社,2008 年。
  • Bernstein, William, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World, New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2008.
  • Bhagwati, Jagdish,《捍卫全球化:附后记》纽约:牛津大学出版社,2007 年。
  • Bhagwati, Jagdish, In Defense of Globalization: With a New Afterword, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  • 德索托,赫尔南多,《资本的奥秘:资本主义为何在西方取得胜利而在其他地方失败》纽约:Basic Books,2000 年。
  • DeSoto, Hernando, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else, New York: Basic Books, 2000.
  • 弗里德曼,托马斯,《世界是平的:二十一世纪简史》纽约:法拉、斯特劳斯与吉鲁出版社,2005 年。
  • Friedman, Thomas, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2005.
  • 弗里德曼,托马斯和迈克尔·曼德尔鲍姆,《那曾经的我们:美国如何在它所创造的世界中落后以及我们如何能够复兴》纽约:法勒、斯特劳斯和吉鲁出版社,2011 年。
  • Friedman, Thomas, and Michael Mandelbaum, That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back, New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 2011.
  • 凯尔顿,斯蒂芬妮。《赤字神话:现代货币理论与人民经济的诞生》第一版。纽约:公共事务出版社,2020年。
  • Kelton, Stephanie. The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy. First edition. New York: PublicAffairs, 2020.
  • Orlik, Tom.《中国:永不破灭的泡沫》纽约:牛津大学出版社,2020 年。
  • Orlik, Tom. China: The Bubble That Never Pops, New York: Oxford University Press, 2020.
  • 彭慕兰,肯尼斯和史蒂芬·托皮克,《贸易创造的世界:1400 年至今的社会、文化和世界经济》纽约:劳特利奇出版社,2015 年。
  • Pomeranz, Kenneth and Steven Topik, The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present, New York: Routledge, 2015.
  • Rein, Shaun,《廉价中国的终结:将扰乱世界的经济和文化趋势》新泽西州霍博肯:威利出版社,2012 年。
  • Rein, Shaun, The End of Cheap China: Economic and Cultural Trends That Will Disrupt the World, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishers, 2012.
  • 罗德里克,达尼,《直言不讳的贸易:建立理智世界经济的想法》新泽西州普林斯顿:普林斯顿大学出版社,2017 年。
  • Rodrik, Dani, Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.
  • 斯蒂格利茨,约瑟夫·E.,《重新审视全球化及其不满:特朗普时代的反全球化》纽约:WW诺顿,2017 年。
  • Stiglitz, Joseph E., Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump, New York: W. W. Norton, 2017.
  • Van Overtveldt,Johan,《欧元的终结:欧盟的不安未来》伊利诺伊州芝加哥:Agate Publishing,2011 年。
  • Van Overtveldt, Johan, The End of the Euro: The Uneasy Future of the European Union, Chicago, IL: Agate Publishing, 2011.
  • 沃尔特·卡尔·豪伊和弗雷泽·豪伊,《红色资本主义:中国非凡崛起的脆弱金融基础》新泽西州霍博肯:威利出版社,2012 年。
  • Walter, Carl, and Fraser Howie, Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of Chinas Extraordinary Rise, Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Publishers, 2012.

值得探索的网站

Websites to Explore

第21 发展中国家的政治经济学

chapter 21 The Political Economies of Developing Countries

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-21

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-21

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 列出所有发展中国家面临的六个问题
  • List six problems facing all developing countries
  • 解释为什么这些问题如此难以解决
  • Explain why each of those problems is so difficult to solve
  • 列出三条你可以给发展中国家潜在领导人的建议
  • List three suggestions you might give to a potential leader of a developing country
  • 列出并讨论发展中国家的各种政策选择
  • List and discuss the various policy options of developing countries
  • 讨论发展中国家的问题,具体参考中国、委内瑞拉和乌干达的案例
  • Discuss developing countries’ problems with specific reference to the cases of China, Venezuela, and Uganda

世界上有195个国家;其中约56个可被视为发达国家。其他国家被称为发展中国家——仍处于不同经济和政治发展阶段的国家。发展中国家之所以被称为发展中国家,是因为它们的收入远低于发达国家。作为一个整体,它们约占世界人口的83%,但仅消费了世界产出的30%左右。表21.1显示了发达国家和发展中国家之间差异的其他一些方面。如你所见,发展中国家的居民寿命更短,收入也更低。

There are 195 countries in the world; of these, about fifty-six might be considered developed. Others are called developing countries—countries still in various stages of economic and political development. Developing countries are called developing because they have far lower incomes than developed countries. As a group, they make up about 83 percent of the world’s population but consume only about 30 percent of the worlds output. Table 21.1 shows some other dimensions of the schism between developed and developing countries. As you can see, people in developing countries live shorter lives and earn less money.

发展中国家可以分为多种类型。许多拉丁美洲国家,如墨西哥、巴西和阿根廷,已经达到了一定程度的发展,其状况优于其他一些国家。其他发展中国家,主要是环太平洋地区的国家,属于第二类,一直保持着较快的经济增长。这些国家包括韩国、台湾和新加坡,在过去四十年中一直保持着较高的增长率(超过7%)。近年来,中国、印度和其他邻国也经历了快速增长。由于这些国家发展迅速,有时人们认为它们已经脱离了发展中国家的范畴,进入了“新兴工业化国家”的行列。在过去十年中,四个快速发展的国家被称为“金砖国家”,分别代表巴西、俄罗斯、印度和中国。它们呼吁建立多极世界秩序,以便在世界事务中拥有更多发言权。

Developing countries can be divided into a variety of groupings. The position of many Latin American countries, such as Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina, which have developed to some degree, is better than that of some others. Other developing countries, primarily those in the Pacific Rim, are in a second group that has managed to maintain rather rapid economic growth. These include South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore, which have had high growth rates (over 7 percent) during the last forty years. More recently China, India, and other neighboring countries have been experiencing fast growth. Because these countries have grown so much, they are sometimes considered to have left the developing country classification and entered the “newly industrialized country” classification. In the past decade, four countries that have been developing quickly have acquired the name BRIC countries, standing for Brazil, Russia, India, and China. They have called for the establishment of a multipolar world order in which they would have more say in world affairs.

过去几十年,经济增长表现最差的国家是非洲国家,直到最近,这些国家的经济都没有增长,或者增长缓慢。有些国家的人均总产出甚至出现了下降。为了区分这些欠发达国家,联合国在21世纪初设立了一个新的类别——最不发达国家:上述名单于2020年更新,涵盖人均GDP低于1018美元的国家。值得庆幸的是,近年来,这类国家的数量有所减少。本文列出的47个国家就属于这一类别。

Over the past decades the worst performers in terms of economic growth have been the countries of Africa, which, until recently, have not grown or have grown only slowly. Some have even seen their total output per capita decline. To differentiate these less-developed countries in the early 2000s, the United Nations created a new category, Least-Developed Countries: The above list was updated in 2020, and includes countries with per capita GDP of under $1,018. Fortunately, the number of countries in this category has declined in recent years. The forty-seven countries listed here fall into this category.

表 21.1

2020 年发达国家与发展中国家之间的分化
  高收入发达国家 低收入发展中国家
人口 12.36亿 64.38亿
人均GDP 44,540美元 5,080美元
预期寿命 81岁 71岁
识字率 99% 86.478%
来源:根据世界银行数据估算。
最不发达国家
最不发达国家
阿富汗 马拉维 安哥拉 马里
孟加拉国 毛里塔尼亚 贝宁 莫桑比克
不丹 缅甸 布基纳法索 尼泊尔
布隆迪 尼日尔 柬埔寨 卢旺达
中非共和国 圣多美和普林西比 乍得 塞内加尔
科摩罗 塞拉利昂 刚果 所罗门群岛
吉布提 索马里 厄立特里亚 南苏丹
埃塞俄比亚 苏丹 冈比亚 东帝汶
几内亚 多哥 几内亚比绍 图瓦卢
海地 乌干达 基里巴斯 坦桑尼亚
老挝 瓦努阿图 莱索托 也门
利比里亚 赞比亚

这些不同群体的不同表现部分源于其截然不同的政策。中国和印度等亚洲国家普遍采取促进出口的政策,并努力维持具有竞争力的汇率。而许多非洲国家则并非如此。另一个差异在于政府和政治结构。亚洲政府强大而稳定;非洲政府软弱而不稳定;拉丁美洲政府的稳定性普遍介于两者之间。稳定的政府是经济持续增长的必要条件。

The different performance of these various groups is a result, in part, of their contrasting policies. Asian countries, such as China and India, have generally adopted policies to promote exports and have worked hard to maintain competitive exchange rates. Many of the African countries have not. Another difference concerns the government and political structure. Asian governments have been strong and stable; African governments have been weak and unstable; Latin American governments’ stability has generally fallen between the two. Stable governments are a requirement of continued economic growth.

发展中国家的经济增长呈现出差异化特征。图21.1显示了发展中国家与工业化国家经济增长速度的对比。自1965年以来,发展中国家的增长速度快于工业化国家,但两者之间的绝对差距不断扩大。

The economic growth of developing countries has varied. Figure 21.1 shows the growth rates of developing countries compared with those of industrialized countries. Since 1965, developing countries have grown at a faster rate than industrial countries, but the gap between the two in absolute terms has grown larger.

发展中国家曾被称为“落后”国家,但我们后来才意识到该词所蕴含的价值判断,于是开始称它们为“不发达国家”;而现在,我们又因为后来才意识到该词所蕴含的价值判断,而称之为“发展中国家”。虽然发展中比落后更可取,但即使是现在这个说法也体现了一种价值判断,暗示着发展中国家有朝一日会变成,或者它们想要变成西方理想中的“发达国家”。事实并非如此——有些国家可能并不想“发展”。原因之一是,“发展中”一词主要指经济体,而非文化。所谓的发展中国家可能拥有与现代经济格格不入的高度精致的文化。如果我们认为他们的文化不如我们的精致,或者他们应该想要变得像我们一样,那就是民族中心主义。

Developing countries were once called “backward,” but, on belated recognition of the value judgment inherent in that term, we began to call them “underdeveloped,” and, on belated recognition of the value judgment inherent in that term, we now call them “developing.” Although developing is preferable to backward, even the current term embodies a value judgment and suggests that someday developing nations will turn into, or that they want to turn into, the Western ideal of a “developed nation.” That is not necessarily the case—it is possible that some countries may not want to “develop.” One of the reasons is that the term developing refers primarily to economies, not cultures. So-called developing countries can have highly refined cultures that are inconsistent with modern economies. It would be ethnocentric of us to think that their cultures are any less refined than ours, or that they should want to become like us.

从西方国家的角度来看,欠发达的是它们的经济和政府体制。那些不发达的发展中国家缺乏维系国家团结的稳定政府和社会制度。在另一个世界里,这未必会造成问题,但在当今世界,如果没有稳定的政府,这些国家很难维持其现有的文化或社会。它们最终会被美国和其他西方文化所淹没。这无所谓好坏,这就是现实。因此,发展中国家面临着抉择的抉择。

What is less developed, from the perspective of western countries, is their economies and their systems of government. Those developing countries that do not develop do not have the stable governments and social systems that hold a country together. In another world, that would not necessarily present a problem, but in today's world, without stable governments it is unlikely that they will be able to maintain their culture or their society as they currently exist. They will simply be overrun by the US and other Western cultures. That is not good or bad; that’s just the way it is. Thus, developing countries find themselves at a point of choice.

图 21.1世界各地区经济增长率。(来源:国际货币基金组织、世界银行、联合国及作者推断)

Figure 21.1Economic growth rate among regions of the world. (Source: International Monetary Fund, World Bank, UN and author extrapolations)

发展中国家的问题

Problems of Developing Countries

为了总结和回顾我们之前关于政治、经济及其相互关系的论述,本章将探讨发展中国家在选择和维持社会、经济和政治制度方面面临的一些问题。虽然这些问题并非发展中国家独有——发达国家也面临着许多同样的问题——但这些问题在发展中国家的严重性值得强调。

To summarize and review much of what we have previously written on politics, economics, and their interrelationship, in this chapter we consider some of the problems facing developing countries in choosing and maintaining social, economic, and political systems. Although these problems are not unique to developing countries—many of the same problems are faced by developed countries—their severity in developing countries makes them worth emphasizing.

在审视发展中国家的选择时,我们希望全面考量它们面临的各种可能性。鉴于全球共有195个国家,它们似乎拥有种类繁多的现有社会形态可供选择,但事实并非如此。各个社会形态并非各自发展,而是相互影响的。因此,我们现在拥有两种主要的经济体制——资本主义和社会主义,以及两种主要的政府体制——民主和专制,尽管每种体制都存在诸多变体。这些体制并不一定涵盖所有可能性,而且可能还有许多社会形态尚未被尝试过。因此,我们必须对新的可能性保持开放的心态。

In looking at their choices, we would like to consider the full range of possibilities open to developing countries. Given that there are 195 countries in the world, it would seem they have a wide range of existing societies from which to choose, but that is not the case. The various societies have not developed separately; they have been influenced by one another. Thus, we now have two main economic systems, capitalism and socialism, and two main systems of government, democracy and autocracy, although there are many variations of each. These systems do not necessarily span the range of possibilities, and probably many forms of society have not been tried. So we must keep an open mind about new possibilities.

政治共识问题

The Political Consensus Problem

非工业化国家面临的核心问题或许可以称之为政治共识问题。政治共识意味着充足的政治秩序和政府效能,使国家领导人能够统治。政治共识问题如下:任何以民族国家形式运作的国家都必须拥有政治共识——即国家公民和领导人普遍认为其政府体制令人满意。统治能力可以源于军事实力、人格魅力或文化和社会习俗,但如果国家要发展,就必须拥有这种能力。

The central problem facing nonindustrial nations is what might be called the political consensus problem. Political consensus means sufficient political order and government efficacy so that the leaders of the state are able to rule. Tire political consensus problem is the following: Any state that is to operate as a nation-state must have a political consensus—a general understanding between the citizens and leaders of a country that their system of government is satisfactory. The ability to rule can be derived from military might, force of personality, or cultural and social mores, but it must exist if the country is to develop.

在美国,我们拥有信息畅通、公众受过良好教育、文化团结以及悠久的民主传统。这些传统限制了个人行为,并维系着我们的社会。例如,当唐纳德·特朗普试图声称存在欺诈行为时

In the United States, we have information availability, an educated public, cultural unity, and a long tradition of democracy. That tradition limits individuals’ actions and holds our society together. For example, when Donald Trump tried to claim that there was a fraudulent

2020年大选败选后,他最终被迫接受党员和选举官员的选举结果。发展中国家很少具备所有这些特质,而且往往一个都不具备。在这些国家,民主模式不太可能在当前很好地发挥作用,尽管它可能为未来提供一个目标。总的来说,近年来在津巴布韦抗议的发展中国家,充其量也不过是一个部分民主或专制政权。

election in 2020 when he lost, he was ultimately forced to accept the results by party members and election officials. Developing countries seldom have all of these qualities, and they often do not have any of them. In those countries, it is unlikely that the democratic model will serve them well in the present, although it may provide a goal for the future. Generally, the developing state protests in Zimbabwe from recent years, at best, a partial democracy, or an autocracy.

独裁和民主都会给发展中国家带来问题。民主制度往往导致政府不断更迭,而民众的意愿并不总是对国家最有利。独裁制度往往导致专制和反复无常的统治。“权力导致腐败”这句老话并非毫无道理。然而,当领导人不够强大时,权力基础往往会在国家框架之外发展。这些权力基础有自己的执行手段;他们可能会要求支付保护费并制定自己的规则。哥伦比亚的毒贩就是一个例子。1985年,哥伦比亚最高法院严厉打击毒贩,导致该国最高法院院长被杀。随后,哥伦比亚众多恐怖组织之一闯入司法大厅,在与军方的枪战中,又有12名法官被杀。墨西哥在时任总统费利佩·卡尔德隆试图严厉打击毒贩时也经历了类似的反应。作为回应,贩毒集团大规模杀害官员和普通民众。墨西哥政府没有足够的力量来阻止这一事件,并且继续受到地区事实上的卡特尔统治和普遍的腐败的破坏。

Both autocracy and democracy present problems for developing countries. Democracies often lead to continual changes of government, and the general populations will is not always what is best for a country Autocracies often lead to arbitrary and capricious rule. The old saying that power corrupts is not without merit. However, when leaders are not strong, power bases often develop outside the state framework. These power bases have their own means of enforcement; they might require payment for protection and make their own rules. Drug dealers in Colombia are an example. In 1985, when the Colombian Supreme Court cracked down on drug dealers, the head of the Supreme Court in that nation was killed. Then one of the many terrorist groups in Colombia invaded the Hall of Justice, and in a shootout with the military, twelve more justices were killed. Mexico experienced a similar reaction when its then president, Felipe Calderón, attempted to crack down on drug dealers. In response, there were widespread killings of officials and the general public by the drug cartels. The Mexican government was not strong enough to prevent it, and continues to be undermined by regional de facto cartel rule and widespread corruption.

中东战乱导致难民数量大幅增加。 © AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/Getty

The wars in the Middle East have led to a large increase in refugees. © AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/Getty

2012 年,在中东许多国家,人们也看到了寻求政治共识的困难。当时,在所谓的“阿拉伯之春”期间,大量民众起来反抗独裁者。结果不是民主得到加强,而是动荡不安,因为人们对于谁来统治,甚至如何决定谁来统治,都没有达成共识。在叙利亚和利比亚,对控制权的争夺引发了不同派别的内战,使经济和社会陷入混乱。在埃及,这导致军队支持的独裁统治重新上台。总而言之:民主——人民的统治——是一个美好的理想,但在实践中,“人民”对民主的含义有很多不同的解读,没有单一的解读方式。

The difficulties of finding political consensus could also be seen in a number of Middle Eastern countries in 2012 when large portions of the general populations revolted against dictators during what is known as the Arab Spring. The result was not more democracy. Instead the result was turmoil since there was no consensus on who should rule, or even how to decide who should rule. In Syria and Libya, the struggle for control led to civil war among various factions, throwing the economies and societies into shambles. In Egypt, it led to the re-imposition of authoritarian rule supported by the army. The bottom line: Democracy—the rule of the people—is a wonderful ideal, but in practice, “the people” have many different interpretations of what democracy means, and there is no one way to arrive at a single interpretation.

腐败问题

The Corruption Problem

与缺乏既定政府(即缺乏固有合法性的政府)密切相关的是腐败问题。腐败是发展中国家的生活方式。例如,在墨西哥城,当你停车时,警察可能会向你要保护费。如果你想进口一件物品,你通常必须贿赂有关部门才能获得许可。没有贿赂,就不能进口。在南非,前总统雅各布·祖马于 2018 年因腐败指控被迫下台。他最终面临十八项腐败指控,以及 700 多项欺诈和洗钱指控。其中一项指控称祖马总统花费了 2300 万美元纳税人的钱在他的乡间别墅上。作为一个部分民主化的国家,自 1994 年种族隔离政权垮台以来,南非各级政府一直受到腐败的困扰。

Closely associated with the lack of an established government, one that has inherent legitimacy, is the problem of corruption. Corruption is a way of life in developing countries. For example, in Mexico City, when you park your car, a police officer might ask you for a protection payment. If you want to import an item, you often must bribe the appropriate authorities to obtain permission. No bribe, no importing. In South Africa, former President Jacob Zuma was forced to step down in 2018 on corruption charges. He ultimately faced eighteen counts of corruption, and more than 700 charges of fraud and money laundering. One charge accused President Zuma of spending $23 million in taxpayer money on his country home. As a partially democratized country, South Africa has been plagued with corruption at all levels of government since the apartheid state fell in 1994.

腐败问题的例子广泛存在,并不局限于某个国家或某个国家内部的政党。我们在这里所说的腐败,在其他国家可能只是习以为常的做法。我们认为,解决腐败问题没有简单的答案,甚至可能没有复杂的答案。

The examples of the corruption problem are wide-ranging and are not tied to any particular country or party within that country. What we call corruption here may be simply accepted practice there. We see no easy answer, or likely even complicated answer, to the problem of corruption.

没有任何制度能够明确地避免腐败。只有根深蒂固的社会习俗才能提供一些帮助;这种信念,无论面临何种诱惑,领导者都不会利用这种情况来攫取权力和财富。这有点像让你

No system clearly offers a way around corruption. Only a deep-seated conviction built into the social mores offers some help; a conviction that regardless of the temptations, the leader will not take advantage of the situation to amass power and wealth. This is a bit like sitting you

在一个有一百个漂亮异性的房间里,告诉你不要和他们中的任何人说话。

in a room of a hundred beautiful people of the opposite sex and telling you not to talk to any of them.

经济问题

The Economic Problem

当收入低于饥饿线时,某种形式的经济发展似乎是必要的。此时,问题不再是“一个国家应该发展吗?”,而是“如何发展?”答案并不明确。一个国家要发展,需要储蓄和投资,但当你连吃饱饭都吃不饱时,又如何储蓄或投资呢?因此,当收入处于或低于某个特定水平时,社会就会陷入恶性循环,难以轻易摆脱——有时甚至根本无法摆脱。他们必须设法自力更生,才能达到开始增长的阶段。

When income is below the starvation level, some form of economic development seems necessary. At that point, the question is not, “Should a country develop?” but, “How?” The answer is unclear. To develop, a country requires savings and investment, but when you don’t have enough to eat, how can you save or invest? Therefore, at or below a certain level of income, societies find themselves in a vicious cycle from which there is no easy escape—and sometimes no escape at all. They must try, somehow, to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps to reach a point where they begin to grow.

为了实现经济增长腾飞,一个国家需要将投资水平提高到国民收入的最低比例。同样至关重要的,并且必须随着储蓄和投资的大幅增长而发展的,是民众对成功的工业社会运作方式的理解。这样,民众必须能够并且愿意培养强劲经济增长所需的态度、行为模式和主动性。仅仅投入资本是不够的。

To achieve takeoff into economic growth, a country needs to raise the level of investment to a certain minimum proportion of the national income. What is also essential, and what must develop along with any substantial increase of savings and investment, is an understanding on the part of the people of how a successful industrial society operates. The citizens must then be able and willing to develop the attitudes, the patterns of behavior, and the initiative required for vigorous economic growth. Simply pouring in capital is not enough.

有时,由于缺乏理解,或为了满足政客的自尊心,追求经济增长的国家会将现有资本投入到错误的地方。例如,它们可能会推出一些令人印象深刻的政府项目,例如国家航空公司或发电厂,而最初最有帮助的可能是提高粮食产量。如果经济增长保持平衡,并为广泛的产出扩张奠定基础,经济增长将会更快。在建立过多的新航空公司或建设发电厂之前,应该增加某些类型的教育和培训经费;应该提供基本的交通、通讯和银行设施;应该努力提高生活水平,以增加工人的福利和生产力,并使大量的储​​蓄和投资成为可能。

Sometimes, because of a lack of understanding, or to satisfy the pride of politicians, countries striving for economic growth spend their available capital on the wrong things. They may, for example, produce impressive government projects such as national airlines or power plants, when what would help most, initially, might be greater production of food. Economic growth will proceed faster if it is balanced and if a foundation is gradually laid for a broad expansion of output. Before too many new airlines are founded or power plants are built, increased provision should be made for certain types of education and training; basic transportation, communication, and banking facilities should be provided; and efforts should be made to raise standards of living in order to increase both the welfare and productivity of workers and also to make possible a significant amount of saving and investment.

社会、政治和经济因素总是相互作用,这是常有的事。例如,许多公司根本不会在某些国家投资,因为这些国家的政府不稳定,而且它们也不愿支付在这些国家开展业务所需的贿赂。由此可见,两种不同文化的冲突。如果美国公司向外国政府官员行贿,就会违反美国法律;然而,如果不行贿,它们就无法在某些国家开展业务。

As is always the case, social, political, and economic factors interact. For example, many companies simply will not invest in certain foreign countries because of the unstable governments there, and they are unwilling to pay the bribes necessary to carry on business in such countries. Here, we can see the clash of two different cultures. United States firms would be breaking US law if they were to pay bribes to foreign government officials; yet without paying bribes, they could not operate in some countries.

外国援助和贸易壁垒当国家无法通过发展内部储蓄和投资自力更生时,它们还有另一种选择。它们可以寻求外国投资的注入,可以是私人外国投资或政府外国援助,后者是一个国家向另一个国家提供的财政和实际援助,特别是技术先进的国家向欠发达国家提供的财政和实际援助。

Foreign Aid and Trade Barriers When countries cannot pull themselves up by their own bootstraps by developing internal savings and investment, they have another option. They can seek foreign infusion of investment, which can come in the form of private foreign investment or governmental foreign aid, which consists of financial and practical assistance given by one country to another, especially by a technologically advanced country to a less developed one.

一名伊拉克妇女带着孩子来到无国界医生组织开办的诊所。 © SABAH ARAR/Getty

An Iraqi woman brings her baby to a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders. © SABAH ARAR/Getty

过去六十年,为了响应发展中国家的援助需求,美国提供的对外援助约占其总产出的0.5%。这些援助的效果好坏参半。其中很大一部分并非用于人道主义目的,而是被用于政治和军事目的。

Over the last sixty years, in response to the developing world’s need for assistance, the United States has given foreign aid at the rate of about one-half of 1 percent of our total output. The results of that aid have been mixed. Much of it has not been used for humanitarian purposes; rather, it has had political and military purposes.

美国对外援助的最大接受国是以色列,而这些援助的提供明显带有政治动机。即使是出于人道主义目的的援助也面临严格审查。许多援助被官僚机构吞噬,并被外国政客攫取;因此,援助从未到达预期的受援国手中。为了应对这些批评,越来越多的援助通过非政府组织(NGO)进行——这些由私人成立的机构试图帮助各国,并将援助引导至需要帮助的人。

The biggest recipient of US foreign aid is Israel, and that aid has been provided based on blatantly political motives. Even aid that was given for humanitarian purposes has faced heavy scrutiny. Much of that aid was eaten up in bureaucracy and skimmed by foreign politicians; thus, it never reached its intended recipients. In response to these criticisms, more and more aid is flowing through nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs—privately established agencies that attempt to help countries and channel aid to those who need it.

外国援助和投资只是答案的一部分。经济答案中同样重要甚至更重要的部分是消除发达国家的贸易壁垒。现实情况是,发达国家对发展中国家的出口并不十分开放。例如,欧盟向其农民提供巨额补贴,而这些农民随后将补贴农产品出口到原本可以生产这些产品但无法以补贴价格竞争的国家。此外,欧盟还对许多农产品进口征收关税。这些政策组合使发展中国家难以发展或扩大其农产品出口,抵消了欧盟对外援助的大部分好处。全球发展中心综合所有有利于或不利于发展中国家的政策,在“发展承诺指数”中对40个最富裕的国家进行了排名。美国排在第18位。

Foreign aid and investment are only part of the answer. An equally or even more important part of the economic answer is removing developed countries’ trade barriers. The reality is that developed countries are not very open to exports from developing countries. For example, the European Union (EU) provides enormous subsidies to its farmers, who then export subsidized farm products to countries that could have produced them, but which cannot compete with subsidized prices. In addition, the EU maintains tariffs against many farm imports. This combination of policies makes it difficult for developing countries to develop or expand their farm exports, countering much of the benefit of EU foreign aid. Combining all policies that help or hurt developing countries, the Centre for Global Development ranked the forty richest countries in a “Commitment to Development Index.” The United States came in eighteenth.

殖民主义的历史遗产当西方政府预算紧张时,他们提供的外援数额常常受到质疑。援助的反对者认为,发达国家不欠发展中国家任何东西。另一方面,援助的支持者则以历史为依据,不仅为提供援助提供了理由,而且为提供比我们更多的援助提供了理由。历史论点如下:西方国家殖民了发展中国家,建立了人为的政治实体,将互不相容的种族聚集在一起,并从这些国家榨取一切。这些发展中国家不被允许以自己的方式发展。在推行这些政策的过程中,西方国家造成了发展中国家今天面临的许多问题。鉴于这段历史以及西方在造成发展中国家当前面临的许多问题方面所扮演的角色,外援的支持者认为,西方有道义上的义务帮助这些发展中国家。

The Historical Legacy of Colonialism When Western governments’ budgets are tight, the amount of foreign aid they give often comes under attack. Opponents of aid argue that the developed countries owe nothing to the developing countries. Supporters of aid, on the other hand, point to history in providing justification not only for giving aid, but also for giving even more than we do. The historical argument goes as follows: Western countries colonized the developing countries, creating artificial political entities that brought together incompatible ethnic groups and extracted what they could from those countries. These developing countries were not allowed to develop in their own way. In following these policies, the West created many of the problems that developing countries face today. Given this history and the West’s role in creating many of developing country’s current problems that developing countries face, supporters of foreign aid argue that the West has a moral obligation to assist them.

债务问题

The Debt Problem

对私人投资(包括来自美国和其他银行的贷款)的依赖,给许多发展中国家带来了一个新问题:债务问题。私人投资和贷款必须偿还,这意味着必须支付利息。

The reliance on private investment, including loans from the United States and other banks, has created a new problem for many developing countries: the debt problem. Private investment and loans must be serviced, which means that interest must be paid.

20世纪80年代,国际债务问题(即不同国家之间未偿还贷款的总额)日益凸显。20世纪70年代,发展中国家的巨额借款加上高昂的利率,使得许多发展中国家几乎无力偿还债务。

In the 1980s, the problem of the international debt—the amount of outstanding loans among different nations—grew in importance. The large borrowings of the developing countries throughout the 1970s, together with high interest rates, made it almost impossible for a number of developing countries to meet their debt obligations.

20世纪90年代,债务重组(允许在较长时间内偿还债务)以及全球利率下降,大大缓解了债务问题。2001年,国际货币基金组织(IMF)为22个国家提供了债务减免,延续了债务重组的趋势。

In the 1990s, that debt problem was greatly reduced by debt restructuring—allowing repayment of debt over extended periods of time—and a fall in the world interest rate. In 2001, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) granted debt relief for twenty-two countries, continuing the trend of debt restructuring.

2005年,八国集团(由八个“发达”国家组成的联盟,旨在商讨解决共同利益问题的解决方案)同意免除最贫穷国家超过400亿美元的债务,部分原因是受到U2乐队主唱博诺的压力。债务减免使各国能够利用节省下来的资金来提供医疗保健、教育和其他社会改善。然而,为了符合该计划的资格,这些国家必须遵守良好的治理实践和透明度。尽管进行了重组,但某些发展中国家仍然拥有巨额债务余额,偿还这些债务仍然是一个问题。

In 2005, the Group of Eight, a consortium of eight “developed” countries that meet to discuss solutions to problems of mutual interest, agreed to cancel more than $40 billion in debt owed by the poorest countries, in part due to pressure from U2’s lead singer, Bono. The debt forgiveness allowed nations to use the money they saved to provide health care, education, and other social improvements. However, in order to qualify for the program, the countries had to comply with good governing practices and transparency. Despite this restructuring, particular developing countries still have large debt balances, and paying off that debt remains a problem.

人口问题

The Population Problem

即使发展中国家开始发展,它们也未必能摆脱贫困的恶性循环,因为它们面临着另一个大问题。简而言之,只要人口继续以目前的速度增长,这些国家在提高人均产出(总产出除以人口)方面将面临巨大的、甚至难以克服的困难。托马斯·马尔萨斯1所论述的贫困循环对许多发展中国家来说都是真实存在的。尽管在技术充分发展的情况下,土地的产量几乎没有上限,但必须克服最初的投资障碍,才能获得实现技术进步所需的资金。

Even if they begin to grow, developing countries will not necessarily escape the vicious cycle of poverty because they face another large problem. Put simply, as long as population continues to grow at current rates, these countries are going to have enormous, perhaps insurmountable, difficulties in increasing their per capita output—the total output divided by the country’s population. The poverty cycle that Thomas Malthus1 wrote about is very real to many developing countries. Although with sufficient technological development there is virtually no limit to the amount of production one can get from land, one must overcome the initial investment hurdle that will provide one with the means to make that technological progress.

人才流失问题

The Brain Drain Problem

尽管上述问题严峻,但发展中国家并非完全没有希望。民族国家的兴起及其发展表明,向发达国家转型是可能的。但在我们说“我们发展了,你们为什么不能?”之前,我们应该考虑到,西方社会的民族国家比当前的发展中国家享有显著的优势。

As bad as the preceding problems are, they do not leave developing countries without hope. The emergence of nation-states and their development show that the transition to developed states is possible. But before we say, “We grew, why don’t you?” we should consider that the nation-states of Western society enjoyed significant advantages over currently developing countries.

18世纪,西方经济蓬勃发展,出行受限,人们倾向于居家,将自身生活与社会联系起来思考。聪明、充满活力的个体改变了他们的社会,但由于他们的生活局限于自身社会,他们的改变通常规模较小,且与社会文化相符。而如今的发展中国家往往并非如此。发展中国家存在人才流失,即那些能够推动国家发展的人才离开该国。

In the 1700s, when Western economies developed, travel was limited and individuals tended to stay home and to consider their life in relation to their society. Bright dynamic individuals modified their society, but because their lives were contained within their society, their modifications were generally small and consistent with that society’s culture. That is often not the way it happens in developing countries today. Developing countries have a brain drain, a process in which the individuals who could make a country develop leave that country.

其中一位作者曾在英国和德国上学,结识了许多来自不同发展中国家的优秀学生。他们因为出类拔萃而被送往国外读书。他们通常成绩优异,但与此同时,也逐渐沉浸于发达文化之中。

Having attended school in Great Britain and Germany, one of the authors came to know a number of the brightest and best students of a variety of developing countries. They were sent away to school because they were so outstanding. They often did well, but in doing so they became immersed in the developed culture.

当这些学生完成学业时,他们常常面临着两种截然不同的经济和文化之间的抉择。一个国家提供丰富的物质资源、他们所受的教育让他们做好了应对的智力挑战以及稳定的环境。另一个国家则提供他们所受的外国教育教会他们逃避的传统价值观、物质匮乏以及他们毫无准备的巨大智力挑战。面对这些选择,许多人要么留在发达国家,要么加入一家薪水和美国工作一样优厚的国际机构。结果就是人才流失。

When such students finish their studies, they often are presented with a choice between two totally different economies and cultures. One offers enormous amounts of material goods, intellectual challenge for which their training has prepared them, and stability. The other offers traditional values from which their foreign education has taught them to escape, material shortages, and enormous intellectual challenges for which they have no preparation. Faced with these choices, many decide to remain in the developed country or to join an international agency that pays as well as a good job in the United States. The result is the brain drain.

以旁观者的角度思考人才流失问题。在印度(医生资源匮乏)接受培训的医生不断移民到人均医生数量远超印度的美国;工程师和计算机专家的情况也是如此。美国从这些移民中获益匪浅,移民构成了所有医生和哲学博士的近五分之一。联合国估计,仅计算机专家移民美国就给印度每年造成20亿美元的损失。此外,许多最优秀的学生出国深造,造成每年110亿美元的外汇外流。将最优秀、最聪明的人才从社会中剔除,会使社会发展更加困难。

Consider the brain drain problem from the perspective of an outside observer. Doctors trained in India, where doctors are in short supply, are constantly immigrating to the United States, where there are many more doctors per capita; the same is true with engineers and computer experts. The United States benefits enormously from this immigration, and immigrants constitute nearly one-fifth of all doctors and PhDs. The UN estimates that India loses $2 billion a year just from computer expert emigration to the United States. In addition, many of the brightest students are going abroad for higher education, causing a foreign exchange outflow of $11 billion annually. Removing the best and the brightest from a society makes it that much harder for the society to develop.

对发展中国家来说,这并非全是损失。移民向祖国汇入数千亿美元,并建立联系,允许并鼓励跨国公司在移民祖国扩张。他们还创造了人才库,一旦国家发展到需要移民培训的程度,这些人才就可以回国。印度和中国移民到美国就是这种情况。越来越多的移民正在返回祖国,利用当地的商业机会。这种经济一体化促进了他们祖国的更快发展。

It is not all a loss for developing countries. Emigrants send hundreds of billions of dollars to their home countries and provide links that allow and encourage global companies to expand into the emigrants’ home countries. They also create a pool of talent that can return to the country once the country develops sufficiently to need the emigrants’ training. This is happening with both Indian and Chinese immigrants to the United States. More of them are returning to their home countries to take advantage of business opportunities there. That integration of economies leads to faster development for their home countries.

不可能的任务:给潜在领导者的建议

Mission Impossible: Advice to a Potential Leader

那么,一个发展中国家应该怎么做呢?我们和其他社会科学家都不知道确切答案。各种建议层出不穷。但结果却很糟糕,所以我们决定偏离标准的教科书原则:我们不会告诉你专家们认为应该怎么做。相反,我们会问你,你认为应该怎么做。因此,我们特此任命你为“希望之地”的社会顾问。(如果你班上有外国学生,你可能会发现这个练习并非遥不可及。他们中的许多人都是各自国家的未来领导人。)

What, then, should a developing country do? Neither we nor any other social scientist knows precisely what to do. Advice has run the gamut of possibilities. The results have been so bad that we are going to deviate from standard textbook policy: We do not tell you what the experts think should be done. Instead, we are asking you what you think should be done. So, we hereby appoint you as social advisor to Hopelandia. (If you have foreign students in your class, you might find that the exercise is not so far-fetched. Many of them are the future leaders of their countries.)

如果你选择接受这份任务,你的任务是制定一份发展规划,并确定一个发展中国家应该遵循哪些政策来解决前面提到的问题。为了简化作业,我们首先会提供一些我们会给潜在领导人的一般性建议、一套有助于你思考这些问题的政策方案,以及一些关于三个发展中国家的初步背景信息。

Your task, should you choose to accept it, is to prepare a development plan and determine what set of policies a developing country should follow to solve the problems mentioned earlier. To make the assignment easier, we begin by providing you with some general advice that we would give a potential leader, a set of policy options to help formulate your thinking about the problems, and some initial background information on three developing countries.

保持开放的心态给发展中国家顾问的第一条建议是:不要武断地排除各种选择,要利用所有关于社会科学各个方面相互关系的现有知识。不要试图效仿任何一个特定的发达国家。做适合自己国家的事情,因为在一个国家行得通的方法不一定适用于另一个国家。例如,在乌干达,部落差异巨大,个人效忠的对象是自己的部落,而不是更大的社会或国家。投票几乎总是意味着投给来自自己部落的候选人。在这种情况下,民主是不稳定的。民主要想有合理的成功机会,效忠的对象必须是整个国家,而不是该国的某个部分。

Keep an Open Mind The first piece of advice to an advisor to a developing country is: Don’t rule out options arbitrarily, and do use all available knowledge of the interrelationships of various aspects of social science. Don’t try to emulate any specific developed country. Do what is right for your country, because what works for one country might not work for another. For example, in Uganda, there are enormous tribal differences, and individuals’ allegiance is to their tribe rather than to the larger society or to their country. Voting almost invariably means voting for whichever candidate is from one’s tribe. Within such a situation, democracy is unstable. For democracy to have a reasonable chance of succeeding, the allegiance must be to the entire country, not to an individual subsection of that country.

认识到困难第二条建议是:在充分认识到发展计划将遇到的困难的情况下,设定目标和优先事项。一个国家应该发展经济,还是应该设定不同的目标,例如维护传统和发展宗教?在中东,许多什叶派穆斯林的信仰更倾向于原教旨主义;他们担心经济增长意味着西方价值观的注入,会导致社会恶化而不是改善。因此,他们选择的目标与经济关系不大,只是作为维护宗教和生活方式的一种手段。在韩国等其他国家,经济增长的权重更大,虽然维护传统总是会发挥一定作用,但当面临不可避免的权衡时,这些国家会根据经济发展做出选择。

Recognize the Difficulties The second piece of advice is: Set goals and priorities with full recognition of the difficulties that the development plan will encounter. Should a country grow economically, or should it instead set different goals, such as maintaining its tradition and furthering its religion? In the Middle East, many Shiite Muslims tend to be more fundamentalist in their beliefs; they fear that economic growth means the infusion of Western values into their society and a worsening, not an improvement, of the society. Therefore, the goals they choose have little to do with economics other than as a means to the end of preserving their religion and their way of life. In other countries such as South Korea, economic growth is weighted more heavily, and although maintaining tradition always plays some role, when faced with the inevitable trade-off, these countries will make choices based on economic development.

保持你的理想主义。最后也是最重要的一条建议是:保持你的理想主义。除非你热爱你的国家,并且愿意将你拥有的一切权力用于国家利益,并且你也理解这种利益,而不是为了你自己或朋友的利益,否则就别想当领导者了,去支持那些愿意这样做的人吧。

Maintain Your Idealism A final and most important piece of advice is: Maintain your idealism. Unless you love your country and are willing to use whatever power you have for the good of the country as well as you understand that good, and not for your own gain or that of your friends, then forget about being a leader and give your support to an individual who will.

发展中国家的选择

Options of Developing Countries

发展中国家有各种各样的方法来解决这些几乎不可能解决的问题。让我们简要地分析一下他们的选择。

Developing countries have a variety of ways to approach their almost impossible problems. Let’s briefly consider their options.

政治选择

Political Options

政治选项包括民主、专制以及介于两者之间的各种形式。所选择的制度必须能够将不同的民族和地区群体整合成一个完整的整体,并使他们感到彼此归属,而不是像血缘上的对手一样,必须不断相互争斗。你为满足这一需求而提出的政策将决定你在经济问题上可以倡导的政策类型。

Political options include democracy, autocracy, and various shades in between the two. Somehow the system chosen must be one that combines the various ethnic and regional groupings into a complete whole and makes them feel that they belong together, rather than that they are blood rivals who must continuously fight with each other. The policies you suggest to meet this necessity will determine the type of policies you can advocate in regard to the economic problem.

经济选择

Economic Options

经济选择的范围很广,从(1)不受约束的资本主义的变体(政府对经济的干预尽可能少),到(2)社会主义(个人可以在某些领域运作,但政府在引导每个个人决策方面发挥着更大的作用),再到(3)某种你所能想到的新型经济组织。这些选择是相互关联的。

The range of economic options goes from (1) variants of unfettered capitalism, in which the government enters into the economy as little as possible, to (2) socialism, in which individuals can operate in certain areas, but the government plays a much stronger role in guiding the choice of each individual decision, to (3) some new kind of economic organization that you think of. The choices are interrelated.

外交政策选择

Foreign Policy Options

国家并非在真空中发展。其他国家也会发挥作用,有时稳定一个政权,有时动摇一个政权,这取决于这些政权的领导人是否遵循其他国家的目标,以及特定大国能否容忍其所支持的政权的运作。因此,你必须选择一种外交政策。

Countries do not develop in a vacuum. Other countries play a role, at times stabilizing a regime, at other times destabilizing a regime, depending on whether the individuals guiding these regimes are following the other country’s goals, and on whether the particular major power can live with the operation of the regime to which it has lent support. Therefore, you have to choose a foreign policy.

冷战时期,发展中国家可以利用前苏联来对抗美国。随着苏联解体,这一策略宣告终结。美国及其盟友几乎成了他们唯一可以调情的对象。正因如此,21世纪初的大多数发展计划都是民主的、市场导向的,旨在吸引资本主义国家的外资。然而,中国经济的显著增长及其日益增强的国际影响力,再次让发展中国家面临另一种“调情”的选择,而援助中两种体系之间的意识形态之争也卷土重来。

During the Cold War, developing countries could play the former Soviet Union against the United States. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, this strategy ended. The United States and its allies were about all there was left to flirt with. That’s why in the early 2000s most development plans were democratic, market-oriented plans. They were designed to attract foreign investment from capitalist countries. However, the significant economic growth in China, and Chinas increasing international presence, is once again presenting developing countries with a variation of the “flirting” option and the ideological fight between two systems embedded in aid is returning.

人口选项

Population Options

你需要问自己一些关于人口的问题。首先,你们国家存在人口问题吗?应对这个问题是人类面临的最艰巨的任务之一,无论是在个人层面、国家层面、国际层面,还是——既然太空殖民已不再是一个荒诞不经的科幻梦想——在宇宙层面。其次,如果你的国家存在人口过剩问题(在我们这里讨论的国家中,让我们暗示一下,你们很可能存在人口过剩问题),你会指导人们不要生孩子,或者至少将孩子数量限制为一两个吗?你会怎么做?第三,在决定了走哪条路以及如何走之后,当你的政策结果开始体现在人口普查数据中时,你能预见到需要应对哪些后果吗?

You need to ask yourself some questions about population. First, do you have a population problem? Facing this issue is one of the most difficult tasks confronting human beings, whether on a personal level, a national level, an international level, or—now that space colonization is not just a wild, science-fiction dream—a cosmic level. Second, if you have an overpopulation problem (and in the countries we are talking about here, let us hint that you may likely have overpopulation problems), do you then go in and direct people not to have children, or at least limit the number to one or two? How would you do this? Third, having made the decision which way to go, and how to go that way, what consequences can you foresee will have to be dealt with when the results of your policy begin to show up in the census figures?

人才流失选项

The Brain Drain Option

你应该鼓励你的尖子生出国吗?如果你这么做了,你怎么能确保他们会回国,在送他们去接受教育的国家运用新学到的技能呢?假设你选择另一种方式,也就是说,把最有前途的年轻人留在国内。在这种情况下,你该如何培养新的想法、年轻人的热情,以及如何引进其他国家已经发展起来的宝贵思想和方法呢?(你肯定不想重新发明轮子。)

Should you encourage your top students to go abroad? If you do, how can you be sure they’ll come home again to use their new skills in the country that sent them to be educated? Suppose you decide the other way, that is, to keep your most promising youth at home. In that case, how will you foster new ideas, youthful enthusiasm, and the importation of valuable ideas and methods that have already been developed in other countries? (You don’t want to reinvent the wheel.)

谁将成为下一任领导人?

Who Will Be the Next Leader?

你希望领导者具备哪些品质?你的国家又需要领导者具备哪些品质?是否应该设立一个委员会或联盟,而不是单一的领导者?无论是哪种情况,领导力素质将如何培养?领导力素质如何得到认可?领导者掌权后将做什么?如果领导层需要控制,又该如何控制?你如何在你的国家寻找和选出领导者?或许,这种寻找不会有结果,或者不如你预期的那样有结果。你是否应该寻找外来人才?如果这是你的选择,你应该在哪里寻找?对于外来人才,你应该像询问本土领导者一样,提出同样的问题。

What qualities do you want and what qualities does your country need in a leader? Should there be a committee or coalition of some kind, rather than a single leader? In either case, how will leadership qualities be developed? How will leadership qualities be recognized? What will the leader, or leaders, do once in power? How should the leadership be controlled, if it should be controlled? How can you search for and pick out the leaders in your country? Perhaps that search won’t be fruitful, or not as fruitful as you expect. Should you look for imported talent? Where should you look for it, if this is your choice? Ask the same questions about the imported talent that you asked about possible homegrown leaders.

当然,你可以问很多其他问题,但是这几个问题应该可以让你开始行动。

You could, of course, ask many other questions, but these few should start you on the way.

案例研究

Case Studies

为了真正了解发展中国家面临的问题及其选择,我们需要了解现实世界中各国的具体经验。因此,我们以三个案例研究来结束本章。

To really get a sense of the problems facing developing countries and their options, we need to look at specific experiences of real-world countries. Thus, we conclude this chapter with three case studies.

中国

China

我们首先考察的是中国,尽管近年来出现了一些问题,但其经济增长仍是一个成功的典范。从20世纪90年代末开始,中国经济在长达十多年的时间里一直保持着超过10%的增长率。2021年,尽管新冠疫情爆发,中国经济仍保持着6%左右的增长率。几乎以任何标准衡量,如此长时间的增长率都是惊人的。中国的经济增长使数亿人摆脱了贫困,并使其成为世界第二大经济体。中国或许仍然是一个发展中国家,但它拥有巨大的影响力和实力。中国依靠所谓的“中国市场社会主义”体制实现了这一目标。中国允许其经济本质上是市场经济,但不允许政治自由。

The first country we look at, China, is a success story in terms of economic growth, despite some recent problems. Starting in the late 1990s the Chinese economy grew at a rate of more than 10 percent for well over a decade. In 2021, it was still growing at about 6 percent despite the coronavirus outbreak. By almost any standard, that rate of growth for that long is phenomenal. Its growth has pulled hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, and has made its economy the second largest in the world. China may still be a developing country, but it is one with enormous clout and power. It did this with what some call a Chinese market socialism system. It allowed its economy to be essentially a market economy, but it did not allow political freedom.

中国拥有如此强大影响力和实力的原因之一是,它是世界上幅员辽阔、人口最多的发展中国家。其国土面积与美国大致相同。其主要语言是普通话,但也包含八种不同的方言。表面上,它是一个联邦共和国,拥有23个省、5个自治区和香港。中国自称是一个社会主义国家,其意识形态由中国共产党主导。(第398页的附框概述了与中国相关的统计数据。)

One of the reasons for its clout and power is that it is the largest and most populous developing country in the world. It has approximately as large an area as the United States. Its main language is Mandarin Chinese, although there are eight separate dialects. Ostensibly, it is a federal republic with twenty-three provinces, five autonomous regions, and Hong Kong. It describes itself as a socialist state, with the Communist Party of China dictating the state ideology. (The box on page 398 gives an overview of the statistics relevant to China.)

直到20世纪80年代末,中国一直实行计划社会主义经济体制,政府控制着大部分经济活动。在经历了数十年改革的动荡、饥荒和政治动荡之后,政府在20世纪80年代末引入了市场和市场激励机制,试图鼓励个体生产。中国经济摆脱了中央计划经济,尽管在其认为的关键产品领域,政府生产仍然占据主导地位。如今,中国将自己视为一种社会主义市场经济。许多领域的市场自由化,使中国在世纪之交成为世界上增长最快的经济体,造就了庞大的中产阶级和众多“新富”群体。

Up until the late 1980s China was a planned socialist economy in which the government controlled most of the economic activity. After the tumult of decades of reforms that brought famine and political upheaval, in the late 1980s the government introduced markets and market incentives to try to encourage individual production. The Chinese economy moved away from central planning, although in what it considers key goods, government production still rules. It now sees itself as a type of socialist market economy. The freeing of the market in many sectors led to China becoming the world’s fastest-growing economy at the turn of the century, creating a substantial middle class and many “newly rich” people.

引入市场经济并非一帆风顺;收入增长严重失衡,绝大多数中国人仍然贫困,而少数人,包括许多与政府关系密切的人,却变得异常富有。对于中国领导人的子女和后代(通常被称为“太子党”)来说尤其如此。体制腐败是领导中国的共产党最担心的问题,他们最近制定了强有力的反腐计划。中国发生的事情令世界各国深感担忧,因为中国已成为一个名副其实的国际超级大国,并对美国的霸权构成了日益严重的威胁。

The introduction of markets has not been without problems; the income growth has been highly skewed, and the large majority of Chinese remain poor, while a few, including many with close ties to the government, have become incredibly rich. This is especially true for children and descendants of the leaders of China, often called the princelings. The sense that the system is corrupt is a major concern for the Communist Party that leads China, and it recently created a strong anti-corruption program. What happens in China is of major concern to all countries in the world, since China has become a genuine international superpower and increasing threat to the United States’ hegemonic power.

中国背景中国被各种天然屏障环绕:东临大海,西南和北部是山脉和沙漠。中国分为三个自然区域:西部,高原和沙漠地区;北部,肥沃的平原地区;南部,主要是丘陵和谷地。长江和黄河是两条主要河流,都具有极其重要的经济意义。中国90%的人口是汉族。其中 95% 的人讲中文,不过也存在几种方言和多种其他语言。

Background of China China is surrounded by a variety of natural barriers: the sea to the east, and mountains and desert to the southwest and north. There are three naturally delineated regions: the west, an area of high plateaus and desert; the north, an area of fertile plains; and the south, mostly hills and valleys. The two main rivers, the Yangtze and the Yellow, are both of extreme economic importance. Ninety percent of the population of China are of Han ethnicity, and 95 percent are Chinese-speaking, although there are several dialects and a variety of other languages.

中国地图。

Map of China.

虽然如今中国人已正式成为无神论者,但大多数中国人仍信奉佛教、道教或中国民间宗教的变体。甚至在此之前,基于父权制的儒家思想就已经建立了极其牢固的家庭和社会纽带,这些纽带以男性至上为基石。20世纪40年代共产党执政和人民公社化之后,许多此类纽带显著削弱。与此同时,女性在中国社会的地位也得到了显著提高。

Though now officially atheist, most Chinese people practice variants of Buddhism, Taoism, or Chinese folk religion. Even before that, Confucianism, based on patriarchal dominance, had established extraordinarily strong family and social ties based on male supremacy. As one result of the communist takeover in the 1940s and the establishment of communes, many of these ties were significantly reduced. As that occurred, the status of women in Chinese society improved greatly.

近代中国经济史的关键在于1945年共产党夺取政权,并试图将社会主义引入中国体制和文化。此后,从1978年开始,领导层更迭,逐步引入了市场导向型改革,并分散了经济决策权。

The key to recent Chinese economic history is the communist takeover of the government in 1945 and its attempt to introduce socialism into the Chinese system and culture. Then, starting in 1978, a change in leadership gradually introduced market-oriented reforms and decentralized economic decision making.

中国的人口问题20世纪70年代和80年代,人口增长是中国面临的主要问题,政府出台了一系列相当强硬的政策来限制人口增长。最初的政策是将二胎家庭定为常态;该政策很快被改为独生子女政策,并辅以一系列经济奖励和惩罚措施。生育超过一个孩子的家庭失去了权利和收入,社区的大多数领导人也劝告他们这样做是不对的。

China's Population Problem In the 1970s and 1980s population growth was a key concern for China, and the government introduced a variety of rather strong policies to limit that growth. It started with an edict pronouncing as a norm the two-child family; that edict was soon changed to a one-child limit, and the system was backed by a variety of economic rewards for those who complied and penalties for those who did not. Families having more than one child lost rights and income, and were counseled by most of the leaders of their community that they were not doing the right thing.

这项规定虽然严苛,却导致出生率大幅下降。到1982年,城市中大多数新组建的家庭都只有一个孩子。然而,农村的情况并非如此。农村家庭渴望多子多孙,尤其是生男孩,这使得他们无视这一限制,甚至在某些情况下,为了生一个男孩,甚至会杀死新生女婴。当局意识到在广大农村地区进行监管的难度,于20世纪80年代末放宽了这些地区的独生子女政策。

The rule was draconian but it led to a significant decrease in the birthrate, and by 1982, the majority of newly formed families in the cities were having only one child. This was not the case, however, in the countryside, where the desire to have several children and, above all, to have boys, meant that families ignored the limit or, in some cases, killed newborn female babies, so that their one child could be a boy. Recognizing the difficulty of policing these vast rural areas, in the late 1980s the authorities relaxed their one-child policy for those areas.

2015 年,中国将独生子女政策改为二胎政策,部分原因是社会观念发生了变化,人们不再想要大量孩子,2021 年又改为三胎政策。这些举措的部分原因是人们不喜欢它,

In 2015 China replaced its one-child policy with a two-child policy, in part because social mores had changed and people no longer wanted large numbers of children, and in 2021 it moved to a three-child policy These moves occurred in part because people disliked it, and in

部分原因是中国担心需要更多劳动力来养活老龄人口。2022年,中国人口略高于14亿,自21世纪初以来一直保持相对稳定。

part because China became concerned about the need for more workers to support the aging population. In 2022, China’s population was a bit more than 1.4 billion, and it has remained relatively stable since the early 2000s.

中国的政治问题

China's Political Problems

政治上,中国仍然由共产党控制。中国走向今天这个状态的道路是一条曲折的道路。毛泽东试图通过“大跃进”实现中国现代化,却导致了一场持续三年(1959 年至 1961 年)的饥荒,数千万人丧生。1966 年至 1976 年,中国由一个激进派系统治,他们策划了“文化大革命”,鼓励青年清除他们认为对中国经济和社会产生不利影响的外部影响。大学被拆散,当局也采取了强有力的措施来瓦解既得利益集团。据估计,这场运动造成数百万人丧生。1976 年,毛泽东去世后,将“文化大革命”带到中国的那群人被赶下台,以邓小平为首的温和派上台。他们开始制定经济激励措施,推进经济现代化,从国家控制的经济转向市场经济。

Politically, China remains controlled by the Communist Party. The way to its present state has been a zigzag path. Mao Zedong’s attempts to modernize China with the Great Leap Forward contributed to a famine that lasted three years, from 1959 to 1961, killing tens of millions of people. From 1966 until 1976, China was governed by a radical faction that engineered the Cultural Revolution and encouraged the youth to purge the economy and society of external influences that it felt had adverse consequences for China. Universities were torn apart and strong attempts were made to break down the vested ruling interests. It is estimated by some that millions of people were killed in this movement. In 1976, after the death of Mao Zedong, the group that brought the Cultural Revolution to China was thrown out of power, and moderates, headed by Deng Xiaoping, took over. They started developing economic incentives and economic modernization, moving from a state-controlled economy to a market economy.

1986年邓小平退休后,赵紫阳和李鹏共同领导中国。他们谨慎地延续了邓小平的经济现代化政策,同时保持了共产党的统治。经济现代化也引发了对政治自由化的诉求,1989年,全世界数百万学生和普通民众与中国政府发生冲突。起义遭到镇压,共产党加强了对国家的控制。在经历了一系列领导层变动以及对腐败问题的担忧之后,习近平于2012年成为领导人。在接下来的几年里,他通过清除批评者和竞争对手(通常以腐败罪名起诉)以及采取巧妙的政治举措(包括持续的经济改革和压制政治异议)来巩固权力。2017年,习近平再次当选五年主席,他的思想被写入共产党章程,这是自毛泽东以来任何一位领导人都未曾有过的。 2018年,中国全国人民代表大会取消了国家主席任期限制,为习近平在可预见的未来继续掌权扫清了道路。

After Deng retired in 1986, Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng shared China’s leadership. They cautiously continued Deng’s economic modernization policies, while maintaining communist control. Economic modernization led to demands for political liberalization as well, and in 1989 the world saw millions of students and ordinary citizens clashing with China’s government. The uprising was repressed and the Communist Party strengthened its control over the country. After a series of leadership changes, and concerns about corruption, Xi Jinping became leader in 2012. Over the next few years he consolidated his power by removing critics and competitors (often on charges of corruption) and through adroit political moves including continued economic reform and suppression of political dissension. In 2017, Xi was reelected for another five-year term, and his thoughts were included in the Communist Party Constitution, something that had not been done with a leader since Mao Zedong. In 2018, China’s National People’s Congress removed term limits for the presidency, clearing the way for Xi to maintain his grip on power for the foreseeable future.

过去三十年,中国经济快速增长,这意味着中国经历了翻天覆地的变化。数亿人离开农村,涌入城市。最初的增长主要集中在中国东部沿海地区,尤其是城镇地区和南方地区,造成了个人和地区之间巨大的不平等。近年来,经济增长也开始在内陆城市出现。在增长过程中,地方政府经常从农民手中夺取原本属于公有的土地,而且往往没有多少补偿,这加剧了不平等,并造成了巨大的贫富差距。少数富人和数百万贫困的工人农民之间的矛盾,导致许多农村地区发生动乱。

Over the past thirty years China has grown at a fast economic pace, which means that China has gone through incredible changes. Hundreds of millions of people moved off farms and into cities. Much of the initial growth was focused on China’s eastern seaboard, especially in the urban areas and in the southern part of China, creating significant inequality among individuals and regions. More recently growth has occurred in inland cities. In the process of growth local governments often seized what had been communal land from rural farmers, frequently with little compensation, creating even more inequality, and creating a significant gap between a rich minority and the millions of poor workers and peasants. The result has been unrest in a number of rural areas.

旧上海被新上海所掩盖。 © ib_L/Alamy Stock Photo

The old Shanghai, overshadowed by the new Shanghai. © ib_L/Alamy Stock Photo

自2013年左右开始,中国经济增速开始放缓。此前基于出口和政府投资的经济增长模式已不再奏效,因为中国工资上涨导致其他发展中国家抢走了中国的业务,而政府投资往往被浪费,并深陷腐败泥潭。随着经济增长放缓,数百万农民工失去了城市工作,被迫返回农村,由于回归农业和其他职业,他们的工资减少了一半。

Starting around 2013, the Chinese economic growth rate began slowing. Its previous economic growth model, which was based on exports and government investment, no longer worked, as wage increases in China allowed other developing countries to take business away from China, and the government investment was often wasted and mired by corruption. As growth slowed, millions of migrant workers lost their city jobs and were forced back to their rural jobs, where they saw a halving of their wages as they reverted to farming and other occupations.

经济增长放缓令共产党深感担忧,共产党统治中国时,与共产党达成了一项默契:它将维持高增长和个人的经济增长,以换取政治权利的缺失。为了应对经济增长放缓,共产党实施了一场备受瞩目的反腐风暴,尽管许多观察人士认为,这场风暴主要针对的是习近平主席的政治敌人,而非他的政治盟友。

This slowing of growth is of serious concern to the Communist Party, which rules China with an implicit agreement—it will maintain high growth and economic gains for individuals in return for a lack of political rights. To deal with the slowing growth, the Communist Party implemented a highly publicized crackdown on corruption, although many observers felt that it was primarily enforced against President Xi Jinping’s political enemies, not his political allies.

随着中国经济实力的增强,其军事实力和在国际上的影响力也不断增强。中国为非洲和南美国家制定了援助项目,并在这些国家投入巨资。中国宣称对其与南海邻国之间海域的岛屿拥有主权——而其邻国也声称对这些岛屿拥有主权。中国还提升了其软实力——通过支持中国学术研究而获得的文化影响力。

As China has increased in economic strength, it has also increased its military power and presence in the world. It has created assistance programs for African and South American countries, and has invested heavily in those countries. It has claimed rights to islands in the waters between it and its neighbors in the South China Sea—islands that its neighbors also claim. It has also increased its soft power—the cultural influence it gains through support of academic studies about China.

一些观察人士担心,如果中国共产党因经济增长缓慢而陷入国内困境,这种缓慢的增长将破坏其与民众达成的以经济增长换取有限政治权利的默契。如果发生这种情况,他们担心中国领导人可能会试图通过“打民族主义牌”来获得支持,这意味着他们通过与其他国家发生冲突来获得国内支持。总而言之,中国正在崛起成为一个成熟的超级大国,但其“市场社会主义”意识形态——政治压迫与经济自由化并存——将如何长期发挥作用仍有待观察。

Some observers fear that if the Chinese Communist Party experiences domestic trouble because slow growth, that slow growth will undermine the implicit agreement with its people of economic growth in return for few political rights. If that happens they fear that Chinese leaders might try to gain support by “playing the nationalistic card,” which means that they gain support domestically because of conflict with other countries. In summary, China is emerging as a full-fledged superpower, but it remains to be seen how its “market socialism” ideology—involving concurrent political repression and economic liberalization—will play out over the long haul.

委内瑞拉

Venezuela

委内瑞拉位于南美洲北部海岸,人口约2850万。由于其境内有安第斯山脉的部分地区,因此拥有丰富的生物多样性。以及亚马逊雨林盆地的部分地区。与许多南美国家一样,委内瑞拉的政治历史复杂,自1811年脱离西班牙独立以来,一直到1958年,委内瑞拉经历了多次独裁统治,之后经历了一系列民主政府的统治。这些民主政府软弱无力,经常发生政治政变和腐败弹劾。委内瑞拉经济的一个显著特点是拥有巨大的石油储备,这意味着拥有可观的石油收入。委内瑞拉的大部分政治斗争都集中在谁将控制石油决策以及谁将获得流入的石油收入上。

Venezuela is a country of about 28.5 million people on the northern coast of South America. It has enormous biodiversity within its borders since it includes parts of the Andes Mountains as well as parts of the Amazon rainforest basin. Like many South American countries it has a complicated political history with numerous autocracies since its independence from Spain in 1811 until 1958, after which a series of democratic governments ruled. These democratic governments were weak and often experienced political coups and impeachments for corruption. A distinguishing feature of the Venezuelan economy is that it has enormous oil reserves, which means that there is substantial oil revenue. Much of the political fighting in Venezuela is centered on who will control the decisions about oil and who will get the oil revenues that flow in.

人们会认为,更多的收入会让社会变得更好,某种程度上也确实如此。但围绕谁将获得这些收入的争斗往往异常激烈,以至于损害了国家的政治稳定。此外,由于对石油的需求可以支撑一国货币的价值,这可能会使其他行业难以在国际市场上竞争。石油资源丰富的国家很容易完全依赖石油收入。然后,当油价下跌时,这些国家就会陷入财政危机。委内瑞拉的情况确实如此,这也是该国政治不稳定的原因之一。

One would think that more revenue makes a society better off, and to some degree it does. But, often, the fights about who will get that revenue become so intense that they undermine the country’s political stability. Moreover, because the demand for that oil can prop up the value of a country’s currency, it can make it hard for other industries to compete in the world market. It is very easy for oil-rich countries to become totally dependent on oil revenue. Then, when oil prices fall, the countries fall into a fiscal crisis. That certainly has been the case in Venezuela, and is one of the causes of the political instability there.

委内瑞拉之所以格外引人关注,是因为截至2021年,它是现存少数几个自认为奉行社会主义经济模式的国家之一。社会主义始于1998年,当时民众对政府的信心崩溃,自称社会主义者的乌戈·查韦斯当选总统。查韦斯主张,委内瑞拉的石油收入应该更多地用于帮助穷人。为此,查韦斯着手制定一项计划,将委内瑞拉建设成一个21世纪的社会主义经济体。他的意思是,委内瑞拉的经济与早期的社会主义经济体不同,它更加分散,规划过程也更具参与性。委内瑞拉成立了一个新的制宪会议,并制定了一部新宪法来实现这一目标。委内瑞拉政府控制了石油生产,并开始向穷人提供更多资金。查韦斯还向古巴提供低成本石油,并在其他国家推广社会主义政党,试图以此来支持国际社会主义运动,并可能在世界各地建立更多的社会主义政府。

Venezuela is of special interest because, as of 2021, it was one of the few countries existing that sees itself as following a socialist economic model. It began in 1998, when there was a collapse of confidence in the government, and Hugo Chavez, a self-professed socialist, was elected. Chavez argued that much more of Venezuela’s oil revenue should go to help the poor. To do that, Chavez embarked upon a plan to establish Venezuela as a twenty-first-century socialist economy, by which he meant that it was distinguished from earlier socialist economies in that it was more decentralized and had a more participatory planning process. A new Constitutional Assembly was created that wrote a new constitution to make that possible. The government took control of oil production and began providing more money to the poor. Chavez also provided low-cost oil to Cuba and promoted socialist parties in other countries, in an attempt to bolster the international socialist movement and perhaps create more socialist governments around the world.

最初,该计划进展顺利。油价高企,政府拥有大量资金支持各种社会项目。当油价下跌,政府收入减少时,政府试图通过借贷和印钞来维持这些项目。这导致了通货膨胀,政府试图通过建立价格管制来抑制通货膨胀。2013年,乌戈·查韦斯因癌症在任内去世。他的副总统尼古拉斯·马杜罗接替了他的位置,试图延续查韦斯的脚步。但他发现这很困难,一方面是因为他缺乏查韦斯的魅力,另一方面是油价进一步下跌,给委内瑞拉经济带来了更大的压力。来自中国的贷款阻止了委内瑞拉经济崩溃。

Initially, the plan went well. Oil prices were high and there was significant money to support a variety of social programs. When oil prices fell, and the government received less revenue, it tried to continue those programs by borrowing, and printing money. This resulted in inflation, which the government attempted to slow by establishing price controls. In 2013 Hugo Chavez contracted cancer and died in office. He was replaced by his vice president, Nicolas Maduro, who attempted to continue in Chavez's footsteps. He found this difficult both because he lacked the charisma of Chavez and because the oil prices fell further, putting even more strain on the Venezuelan economy. Loans from China stopped the Venezuelan economy from crashing.

委内瑞拉经济状况的下滑引发了大规模的政治抗议。作为回应,马杜罗总统监禁了反对者和抗议者。他对许多商品实施价格管制,这催生了黑市,其价格是那些“受价格管制”的商品(如果可以合法购买的话)的五六倍。因此,人们购买黑市商品,因为虽然许多必需品在普通商店价格低廉,但却买不到。

The declining Venezuelan economic conditions led to significant political protests. In response, President Maduro jailed opponents and protesters. He put price controls on many goods, which created black markets with prices five or six times those of the “price-controlled” goods that could be legally bought, if they were available. So, people bought black market goods because, while many necessities had low prices in regular stores, they were unavailable.

委内瑞拉地图。

Map of Venezuela.

经济困境导致马杜罗的支持率暴跌。为此,马杜罗改组了委内瑞拉政府,监禁反对者,实际上将委内瑞拉的民主政体转变为由他掌权的独裁政体。包括美国在内的许多民主国家拒绝承认马杜罗为委内瑞拉的合法总统,怀疑2018年选举存在舞弊行为。由于这种不合法性以及委内瑞拉对政治犯的不人道审讯手段,特朗普总统的政府试图推翻马杜罗,但未能成功。拜登总统将如何应对这一艰难的政治局势,仍有待观察。

The economic difficulties caused Maduro’s approval ratings to plummet. In response, Maduro restructured the Venezuelan government, imprisoned opponents, and essentially turned the Venezuelan democracy into an autocracy with him in charge. Many democratic countries, including the United States, refuse to recognize Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela, suspecting a fraudulent election in 2018. As a result of this illegitimacy and Venezuela’s inhumane interrogation techniques of political detainees, President Trump’s administration tried to oust Maduro. It failed to do so. It remains to be seen how President Biden will navigate this difficult political situation.

如何看待这段历史?一个教训是,政府很难通过掌控经济来实现其社会目标。经济高度复杂,政府通过社会主义计划经济进行强力控制几乎总是导致物资短缺和经济困境。但这并不意味着努力实现社会平等是一个不可取的目标;它只是意味着,如果一个国家正在这样做,其领导人需要循序渐进,并意识到行动过快或不做出经济中必要的艰难决策,将导致严重的困境。

What to make of this history? One lesson is that that it is really difficult tor a government to achieve its social goals by taking control of the economy. The economy is highly complex, and strong attempts at government control through socialist planning have almost always led to shortages and economic troubles. But that does not mean that trying to achieve social equality is an undesirable goal; it simply means that if a country is doing so, its leaders need to go slowly and be aware that moving too fast, or not making the hard decisions that need to be made in an economy, will lead to serious difficulties.

乌干达

Uganda

乌干达国土面积93,070平方英里,人口增长迅速,已超过四千五百万。当地使用多种语言,包括班图语、斯瓦希里语和英语。居民信奉基督教、伊斯兰教,并有各种部落教派。乌干达位于赤道,平均海拔4,000英尺。其中部为肥沃的高原,东西两侧为东非大裂谷山脉。年降雨量约为40英寸,气温通常保持在60°F至85°F之间。

Uganda has an area of 93,070 square miles and a fast-growing population of more than forty-five million. A variety of languages are spoken, including Bantu, Swahili, and English. Its religions are Christian, Muslim, and a variety of tribal sects. Uganda lies on the equator and has an average elevation of 4,000 feet above sea level. Its central fertile plateau is bounded to the east and west by the mountains of the Great Rift Valley. Annual rainfall is about 40 inches, and temperatures generally remain between 60°F and 85°F.

乌干达总统约韦里·穆塞韦尼。 © Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images

President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. © Waldo Swiegers/Bloomberg via Getty Images

乌干达最大的问题是政治缺乏凝聚力;它由十几个主要部落组成,其中班图语族占多数。南部的乌干达部落目前人数最多,并以他们的部落名称命名整个国家。大多数人以农业为生,尽管一些北部部落也从事游牧。文盲价格极高。乌干达大部分农业为自给自足和畜牧业,但咖啡仍然是世界上最大的生产国之一,咖啡几乎占其全部出口收入。乌干达于1894年作为英国的保护国发展成为现在的样子,并于1914年扩张至现今的疆域。它于1962年独立,1971年伊迪·阿明发动军事政变,推翻了总统米尔顿·奥博特。1972年,阿明驱逐了乌干达的亚洲人口,并开始实行恐怖统治。

Uganda’s biggest problem is a lack of political coherence; it comprises a dozen major tribes, of which the Bantu-speaking groups form the majority. The Ugandan tribes in the south are now the most numerous and have given their tribal name to the whole country. Most people depend on agriculture for a living, although some of the northern tribes are also wandering herders. Illiteracy is extremely high. Most agriculture consists of subsistence and livestock farming, although Uganda remains one of the world’s largest producers of coffee, which accounts for almost all of its export earnings. Uganda developed, in its current form, as a British protectorate in 1894, and was extended to its present boundaries in 1914. It became independent in 1962, and in 1971 Idi Amin deposed President Milton Obote in a military coup. In 1972, Amin expelled Uganda’s Asian population and launched a rule of terror.

非洲地图(左);乌干达地图(右)。

Map of Africa (left); Map of Uganda (right).

1979年,坦桑尼亚入侵乌干达,阿明逃亡。(2000年,他在沙特阿拉伯流亡期间去世。)随着阿明的流亡,前总统米尔顿·奥博特回归执政。奥博特执政五年,但偏袒自己的部落兰吉人。1985年中期,他再次被废黜,由来自阿乔利部落的军人蒂托·奥凯洛接任。

In 1979, Uganda was invaded by Tanzania, and Amin fled. (In 2000, he died in exile in Saudi Arabia.) With Amin’s exile, the ex-president, Milton Obote, returned to rule the nation. Obote ruled for five years but favored his own tribe, the Langi, and in mid-1985 was again deposed, being replaced by a military man, Tito Okello, a member of the Acholi tribe.

1986年,约韦里·穆塞韦尼取代奥凯洛,将这个看似无望的国家——一个名存实亡、本书早期版本将其描述为一团糟的国家——转变为一个政治上更加稳定的国家,并且自1987年以来持续实现了令人瞩目的增长。截至2022年,穆塞韦尼仍在执政。

In 1986, Okello was replaced by Yoweri Museveni, who turned what seemed to be a hopeless situation—a country that existed more in name than in reality, a country that earlier editions of this book described as a basket case—into a more politically stable country that since 1987 has continued to grow impressively. As of 2022, Musevini remained in power.

他是如何做到的?首先,他坚守理想主义;他没有将国家财富据为己有或据为己有。其次,他向其他部落开放政府,并在部落之间建立了政治联盟,尽管这种联盟脆弱,却最终使战乱得以平息。第三,他减少了政府中的严重腐败,同时保留了小规模腐败,以维护政府工作人员的支持。第四,他建立了一个足够稳定的法律体系,允许国内外投资。第五,尽管他是一位社会主义者,但他建立了自由市场,减少了政府垄断和政府控制企业的数量。最后,他控制了一支强大的军队。乌干达仍然存在着严重的问题。基特古姆等乌干达北部城市仍在从内战中恢复,这场内战造成超过20万人死亡,许多人迁往难民营。

How did he do this? First, he kept his idealism; he did not appropriate large amounts of the country’s wealth for himself and his followers. Second, he opened his government to other tribes and built a political alliance among tribes that, although tenuous, allowed the fighting to stop. Third, he reduced major corruption in government while leaving minor corruption in place to maintain the support of the government workers. Fourth, he established a sufficiently stable system of laws that allowed international and domestic investment to occur. Fifth, although he was a socialist, he established free markets and reduced the number of government monopolies and government-controlled businesses. And finally, he maintained a strong army under his control. Uganda still has serious problems. Northern Ugandan cities, such as Kitgum, are still recovering from a civil war in which more than 200,000 people died and many others moved to refugee camps.

值得注意的是,乌干达令人称道的经济表现并未带来政治改革。执政党国民抵抗运动(NRM)占据主导地位,使其他政党难以或无法参与竞争。如果一个竞争政党开始表现良好,通常会遭到政府调查,发现其违反了规则或法律,其领导人甚至可能面临牢狱之灾。穆塞韦尼总统认为,多党民主制虽然适合西方社会,因为西方社会是按阶级横向划分的,但它只会加深非洲社会内部的分裂,因为非洲社会是按种族或地区纵向划分的。他表示,鉴于乌干达面临的种族问题,西方式的民主并不适合乌干达或大多数其他非洲国家。他认为,西方国家应该考虑他执政的结果,而不必担心乌干达是否拥有西方式的民主。乌干达对非传统政党进行严格限制(但并非完全禁止)的体制被称为“运动体制”。

It should be noted that the commendable economic performance in Uganda has not led to political reform. The ruling party, the NRM, dominates and makes it difficult or impossible for other parties to compete. If a competing party starts to do well, it generally experiences a government investigation that discovers that it has violated a rule or law, and the leader is threatened with jail. President Museveni argues that while multiparty democracies suit Western societies, which divide horizontally by class, they only deepen divisions within African societies, which are vertically split along ethnic or regional lines. He says that, given the ethnic problems Uganda faces, Western-style democracy is not appropriate for Uganda or most other African nations. He argues that Western countries should consider the results of his rule and not worry about whether it has a Western-style democracy. Uganda’s arrangement of severely restricted, though not totally banned, alternative political parties is known as the “Movement system.”

穆塞韦尼的“运动”体制对支持西方国家民主实践的西方学者构成了挑战。问题在于,在存在众多相互竞争的民族的发展中国家,西方式的民主往往会导致严重的腐败和内战。穆塞韦尼认为,鉴于这一现实,非洲发展中国家需要一个致力于国家稳定和防止腐败的理想主义的广泛团体来监督政治民主的实施。他认为他的“运动”为乌干达提供了这样的团体,并且在他卸任后,他呼吁“运动”继续存在——不是作为一个政党,而是一个监督国家稳定和防止腐败的组织。问题在于,如果任何团体失去了理想主义,他们是否还能对“运动”进行制衡?越来越多的西方观察家,那些曾经支持“运动”的人,认为它正在变成一个扼杀民主的独裁政权。

Museveni’s Movement system is a challenge to Western scholars who support democracy as it is practiced in Western countries. The problem is that in developing countries with many competing ethnic groups, Western-style democracy often leads to enormous corruption and civil war. Museveni argues that, given that reality, developing African countries need an idealistic broad group committed to state stability and preventing corruption to oversee the playing out of political democracy. He sees his Movement as providing that for Uganda, and after he leaves office, he has called for the Movement to remain—not as a political party but as an organization overseeing state stability and preventing corruption. The problem is whether any group will be able to provide checks on the Movement if they lose their idealism. More and more, Western observers who were previously supportive see the Movement turning into an autocracy that stifles democracy.

结论

Conclusion

在思考一个发展中国家必须做出的选择时,你会看到整个社会的博弈正在展开。那些做出正确选择的人,将带领他们的国家走向繁荣和政治稳定;而那些做出错误选择的人,则将他们的国家推向贫困。

In considering the choices a developing country must make, you will see the game of society played in its entirety. The individuals who succeed in making the right choices launch their countries into prosperity and political stability Those who make the wrong choices leave their countries in poverty.

前面的描述必然是简短的。您可以在网上和图书馆找到更多信息,而且在做出合理选择之前,您还需要更多信息。即使您没有迈出“社会科学的第一步”走进图书馆,也要留意报纸、《经济学人》等新闻杂志、电视互联网上关于这些国家和其他国家的故事——因为这些国家将会成为新闻。社会科学问题围绕着您,并将持续影响您的一生。

The preceding descriptions have been necessarily brief. You can find more information online and in the library, and you’ll need a lot more information before you can make reasonable choices. Even if you don’t take that “step-for-social-science” into the library, keep your eyes and ears open for stories about these and other countries in the newspapers; in news magazines such as the Economist; and on television and the Internet—because these countries will be in the news. The issues of social science surround you and will continue to surround you all your life.

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 所有发展中国家面临的六大问题是政治共识问题、腐败问题、经济问题、债务问题、人口问题和人才流失问题。
  • Six problems facing all developing countries are the political consensus problem, the corruption problem, the economic problem, the debt problem, the population problem, and the brain drain problem.
  • 这些问题彼此之间都相互关联,并且深深根植于社会文化之中。
  • Each of these problems is interrelated with the others and is deeply ingrained in the culture of the society.
  • 对于发展中国家的潜在领导人来说,合理的建议包括保持开放的心态、认识到困难并保持理想主义。
  • Reasonable suggestions for a potential leader of a developing country include keeping an open mind, recognizing the difficulties, and maintaining idealism.
  • 发展中国家的政策选择包括政治选择、经济选择、外交政策选择、人口选择、人才流失选择等。
  • Policy options for developing countries include political options, economic options, foreign policy options, population options, and brain drain options.
  • 要真正了解发展中国家的问题,必须对具体国家进行案例研究。
  • To truly understand the problems of developing countries, we must do case studies of specific countries.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 人才流失 (395)
  • brain drain (395)
  • BRIG国家(386个)
  • BRIG countries (386)
  • 文化大革命(398)
  • Cultural Revolution (398)
  • 债务重组(393)
  • debt restructuring (393)
  • 发展中国家 (395)
  • developing countries (395)
  • 外国援助 (392)
  • foreign aid (392)
  • 国际债务(393)
  • international debt (393)
  • 最不发达国家(404)
  • Least-Developed Country (404)
  • “运动系统”(402)
  • “Movement system” (402)
  • 非政府组织 (392)
  • NGO (392)
  • 人均产出(393)
  • per capita output (393)
  • 政治共识 (388)
  • political consensus (388)
  • 软实力(399)
  • soft power (399)
  • 世界银行 (391)
  • World Bank (391)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 确定一个国家为发展中国家的主要特征是什么?
  2. What is the chief characteristic that identifies a country as developing?
  3. 列举三组发展中国家,并简要说明各组之间的区别。
  4. Name three groups of developing countries, and state briefly what distinguishes one group from another.
  5. 如果一个发展中国家无法找到保持自身团结的方法,那么它将会发生什么?
  6. If a developing country cannot find a way to hold itself together, what is likely to happen to it?
  7. 为什么民主可能不是发展中国家最好的政治制度选择?
  8. Why might democracy not be the best choice of political system for a developing country?
  9. 专制政府有什么优点吗?如果有,具体有哪些优点?
  10. Are there any good things to be said for autocratic government? If so, what are some of them?
  11. 腐败的政府有哪些滥权行为?
  12. What are some of the abuses in which a corrupt government indulges?
  13. 一个穷国或许可以通过变得更加富裕来解决问题。那么,穷国如何才能储蓄和投资呢?
  14. A poor country might solve its problems by becoming richer. How can a poor country save and invest?
  15. 发达国家政府对发展中国家的援助一直在减少。请说明原因。
  16. Aid to developing countries from the governments of developed countries has been decreasing. Give some of the reasons.
  17. 一些发展中国家从外国银行借了太多钱,以至于偿还贷款非常困难。这些国家可能会发生什么?
  18. Some developing countries have borrowed so much money from foreign banks that they are having great difficulty paying it back. What is likely to happen in such countries?
  19. 人口快速增长给发展中国家带来了哪些问题?人口快速增长对发展中国家有什么好处?
  20. What problems does rapid population growth present to a developing country? Are there any advantages to rapid population growth in developing countries?
  21. 发展中国家如何才能获得在现代工业社会中竞争所需的人力技能、培训和宝贵的思想?
  22. How can a developing country acquire the human skills, training, and valuable ideas it needs in order to compete in modern industrial society?
  23. 有没有万无一失的解决发展中国家问题的方案?如果有,请描述一些解决方案。
  24. Are there guaranteed solutions to the problems of developing countries? If so, describe some of the solutions.
  25. 您对霍普兰迪亚国家的发展有什么建议?
  26. What were your proposals for the development of the country of Hopelandia?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 请访问www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGLwT9dreXg&ab_channel=RiversandsIncubationHub观看视频。Riversands 孵化中心是什么?
  2. Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGLwT9dreXg&ab_channel=RiversandsIncubationHub and watch the video. What is the Riversands Incubation Hub?
  3. 观看视频,请访问www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKTHetMqOvk&ab_channel=IFAD。这些年轻人普遍面临哪些困难?国际农业发展基金 (IFAD) 提供了哪些帮助?
  4. Watch the video at www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKTHetMqOvk&ab_channel=IFAD. What are some common difficulties these young people face? How has IFAD helped?
  5. 请访问www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxPA3xkSpJY观看视频。根据这段视频,拉丁美洲是否应该关注气候变化的影响?
  6. Go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxPA3xkSpJY and watch the video. Based on this video, should Latin America be concerned about the effects of climate change?
  7. 请访问联合国关于确定最不发达国家的网页:www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/least-developed-country-category.html。确定一个国家是否是最不发达国家的标准是什么?您认为哪个标准最重要?
  8. Look at the UN page on identifying Least Developed Countries at www.un.org/development/desa/dpad/least-developed-country-category.html.What are the criteria for determining if a country is an LDC? Which criterion do you think is most important?
  9. 前往国际货币基金组织页面:www.imf.org/external/np/exr/glossary/index,asp.什么是重债穷国倡议?
  10. Go to the International Monetary Fund page, www.imf.org/external/np/exr/glossary/index, asp. What is the HIPC Initiative?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 科恩,杰西卡和威廉·伊斯特利,《什么在发展中有效?做大与做小》,华盛顿特区:布鲁金斯学会,2009 年。
  • Cohen, Jessica, and William Easterly, What Works in Development? Making Big and Making Small, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 2009.
  • Collier, Paul,《最底层的十亿人:最贫穷的国家为何失败以及如何应对》纽约:牛津大学出版社,2007 年。
  • Collier, Paul, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  • 伊斯特利,威廉,《白人的负担:为什么西方人帮助其他人的努力取得了如此多的成果而却收效甚微》纽约:企鹅出版社,2007 年。
  • Easterly, William, The White Man’s Burden: Why the Wests Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much III and So Little Good, New York: Penguin, 2007.
  • 伊斯特利,威廉,《专家的暴政:经济学家、独裁者和被遗忘的穷人的权利》纽约:Basic Books,2015 年。
  • Easterly, William, The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor, New York: Basic Books, 2015.
  • 爱泼斯坦,杰拉尔德,《发展中国家的资本外逃和资本管制》切尔滕纳姆:爱德华·埃尔加,2005 年。
  • Epstein, Gerald, Capital Flight and Capital Controls in Developing Countries, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2005.
  • 爱泼斯坦,海伦·C.,《又一场混乱:美国、乌干达与反恐战争》,纽约:哥伦比亚全球报道,2017 年。
  • Epstein, Helen C., Another Fine Mess: America, Uganda, and the War on Terror, New York: Columbia Global Reports, 2017.
  • 加列戈斯,劳尔,《原油国度:石油财富如何毁掉委内瑞拉》内布拉斯加州林肯市:波托马克图书公司,2016 年。
  • Gallegos, Raul, Crude Nation: How Oil Riches Ruined Venezuela, Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2016.
  • 罗伯特·盖斯特,《被束缚的大陆:权力、腐败和非洲人的生活》,华盛顿特区史密森尼图书2004 年
  • Guest, Robert, The Shackled Continent: Power, Corruption, and African Lives, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Books, 2004.
  • Isegawa Moses Snakepit(乌干达),纽约:Knopf,2004 年。
  • Isegawa, Moses, Snakepit (Uganda), New York: Knopf, 2004.
  • 梅雷迪斯·马丁,《非洲的命运:非洲大陆独立以来的历史》纽约:公共事务出版社,2011 年。
  • Meredith, Martin, The Fate of Africa: A History of the Continent Since Independence, New York: Public Affairs, 2011.
  • 波特,帕特里克。《自由秩序的虚假承诺:怀旧、妄想与特朗普的崛起》马萨诸塞州波士顿:Polity出版社,2020年。
  • Porter, Patrick. The False Promise of Liberal Order: Nostalgia, Delusion and the Rise of Trump. Boston, MA: Polity, 2020.
  • 萨克斯,杰弗里,《贫困的终结:我们时代的经济可能性》纽约:企鹅出版社,2005 年。
  • Sachs, Jeffrey, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time, New York: Penguin, 2005.
  • 斯托林斯,芭芭拉,《21世纪的依赖?:中拉关系的政治经济学》,剑桥:剑桥大学出版社,2020 年。
  • Stallings, Barbara, Dependency in the Twenty-First Century?: The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
  • 特里普,艾利·马里,穆塞韦尼斯,《乌干达:混合政体中的权力悖论》科罗拉多州博尔德第一论坛出版社2010 年
  • Tripp, Aili Mari, Musevenis Uganda: Paradoxes of Power in a Hybrid Regime, Boulder, CO: First Forum Press, 2010.
  • Wasserstrom Jeffrey,《21 世纪的中国:每个人都需要知道什么》纽约:牛津大学出版社,2010 年。
  • Wasserstrom, Jeffrey, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know, New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

第22国际机构与寻求和平

chapter 22International Institutions and the Search for Peace

DOI:10.4324/9781003242390-22

DOI: 10.4324/9781003242390-22

阅读完本章后,您应该能够:

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

  • 解释这句话:“战争只是政治通过其他手段的延续。”
  • Explain the statement, “War is merely a continuation of politics by other means.”
  • 定义先发制人的政策并解释其对国际和谐的影响
  • Define the policy of pre-emption and explain its implications for international harmony
  • 描述国际法的实用性和局限性
  • Describe the usefulness and limitations of international law
  • 列出联合国最重要的三个机构
  • List the three most important organs of the United Nations
  • 总结美国在联合国的立场
  • Summarize the United States’ position on the United Nations
  • 总结当前的和平前景
  • Summarize the current outlook for peace
  • 讲述阿以冲突的历史
  • Give a history of the Arab-Israeli conflict

唐纳德·特朗普执政期间,他减少了海外军事存在,并基本撤出了叙利亚和阿富汗的战争。他在某些方面挑战中国,并对一些俄罗斯领导人实施制裁——但这两项变化都反映了美国的长期政策方针。特朗普确实改变了一些政策——他退出了伊朗核协议,并几乎完全放弃了巴勒斯坦解放组织与以色列的冲突。尽管如此,特朗普总统任期内外交政策的变化,更多的是措辞、基调和风格上的改变,而非拜登当选后重新引入的传统美国外交政策方针。

During Donald Trump’s time in office he reduced foreign presence abroad and largely withdrew from wars in Syria and Afghanistan. He challenged China on some fronts, and placed sanctions on a set of Russian leaders—but both these changes reflected long-term US policy approaches. Trump did change some policies—he pulled out of the Iran Nuclear Accord and almost totally abandoned the Palestine Liberation Organization in its conflict with Israel. Still, the change in foreign policy under President Trump was more a change in language, tenor, and style from the traditional US approach to foreign policy that Biden brought back with his election.

这种另类风格可以从特朗普与朝鲜的交锋中看出。2017年,朝鲜试射了一枚可打击美国本土的洲际弹道导弹(ICBM),试图挑衅美国。朝鲜领导人金正恩警告美国,他的办公桌上就有一个发射按钮,而且他不怕使用它。美国的正常回应应该是通过外交谈判。唐纳德·特朗普在推特上回应金正恩,称他为“火箭人”。特朗普在推特上写道:“他那个资源匮乏、粮食匮乏的政权,能不能有人转告他一下,我也有核按钮,但比他的更大、威力更大,而且我的按钮还能用!”

That alternative style can be seen in Trump’s interface with North Korea. In 2017, North Korea attempted to provoke the US by testing an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching anywhere in the Unites States. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned the United States that he had a launch button on his desk, and he wasn’t afraid to use it. The normal US response would have involved diplomatic discussions. Donald Trump responded to Kim Jong-un on Twitter, calling him Rocket Man. Trump tweeted: “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!”

许多传统的政策制定者或许曾有过这些想法,但他们不会说出来,更不会发推特让所有人听到。现实情况是,世界事务错综复杂,而美国的介入往往会使其变得更加复杂。过去几十年的大部分战争都反映了美国为应对2001年9月11日的“9·11”袭击事件而发动的反恐战争。在那次袭击事件中,原教旨主义伊斯兰恐怖组织基地组织劫持了飞机,并将其撞向纽约世贸中心和华盛顿特区的五角大楼。作为回应,美国宣布对恐怖主义发动全面战争,并采取了先发制人的政策——根据这项政策,美国将在任何地方发现恐怖分子,甚至在“恐怖分子”实施任何恐怖主义行为之前就对其进行打击。这项先发制人的政策,后来被称为布什主义,因为它是由时任总统小布什实施的,他带领美国卷入了伊拉克战争和阿富汗战争。不幸的是,这些战争并没有减少恐怖主义,反而使其蔓延。

Many traditional policy makers may have thought those sentiments, but they would not have said them, let alone tweet them for all to hear. The reality is that world affairs are complicated and messy, and US involvement often makes it messier and more complicated. Much of the fighting in the past couple of decades has reflected a War on Terror that the US launched in response to the September 11, 2001, attack in which Al-Qaeda, a fundamentalist Islamist terrorist group, hijacked airplanes and crashed them into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. In response, the United States declared a general war on terrorism and adopted a policy of pre-emption—a policy under which the United States would attack terrorists wherever they were found, even before the “terrorists” had committed any acts of terrorism. This policy of pre-emption, which became known as the Bush Doctrine, because it was implemented by then President George W. Bush, led the United States into the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Unfortunately, those wars did not reduce terrorism, but rather spread it.

先发制人政策的两个方面极具争议:首先,美国宣布其有权进入​​任何主权国家打击恐怖分子。如果一个国家窝藏恐怖分子,该国将被视为恐怖主义国家,从而受到美国的攻击。其次,这些攻击可能基于怀疑和秘密收集的情报,而其他国家很难核实这些信息。

Two aspects of the policy of pre-emption were highly controversial—the first was that the United States declared that it had the right to go into any sovereign country and fight terrorists. If a country harbored terrorists, that country would be considered a terrorist country and thus subject to US attack. Second, those attacks could be based on suspicions and clandestinely gathered information, which would be hard for any other country to verify.

伊拉克战争和阿富汗战争的代价和成本都远超最初的预期。伊拉克战争夺去了数千名美国人的生命,耗资超过1万亿美元;萨达姆·侯赛因政府迅速垮台后,伊拉克内乱持续至今。阿富汗也出现了类似的情况。2021年,美国干脆从阿富汗撤军,而美国一直在打击的塔利班宣布胜利,并接管了该国政权。

Both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were much more expensive and costlier to conduct than originally predicted. The Iraq War cost thousands of US lives and more than $1 trillion; after a quick defeat of the Saddam Hussein government, it led to civil strife in Iraq that is still ongoing today. A similar outcome occurred with Afghanistan. In 2021, the U.S. simply withdrew its forces from Afghanistan and the Taliban, whom the US had been fighting declared victory and took over running the country

伊拉克和阿富汗只是美国参与的地区中的两个。美国在那里的困境导致伊朗和朝鲜对美国关于其行动的要求采取强硬立场。朝鲜研制了可以打到美国的核武器和导弹。伊朗致力于发展核计划,但同意暂停该计划,以换取联合国解除对伊朗的经济制裁。巴拉克·奥巴马总统接受了该协议,但特朗普总统对此提出质疑,并于2018年宣布美国退出该协议。然而,在2021年,新任总统乔·拜登却开始探索重新加入该协议。

Iraq and Afghanistan were just two of the areas in which the United States was involved. The United States’ difficulties there led Iran and North Korea to take strong stands against US demands about what they should do. North Korea developed nuclear weapons and missiles that could reach the United States. Iran worked on developing a nuclear program, but agreed to suspend that work in exchange for a removal of UN economic sanctions against it. President Barack Obama accepted the deal but President Trump questioned it, and in 2018 he withdrew the United States from the deal. Then in 2021, the new president, Joe Biden, explored re-entering it.

与中国和俄罗斯的互动同样困难重重,充满变数。俄罗斯支持叙利亚总统巴沙尔·阿萨德,而美国反对其统治;俄罗斯反对美国介入乌克兰事务,并正在抵制北约的支持。中国正在远东地区展现其影响力。它正在发展海军,并宣称对南海大部分地区拥有控制权,甚至在环礁上填海造陆,将其变成岛屿,并在上面建造空军基地,以强化其主权。

Interactions with both China and Russia are also difficult and in flux. Russia supports President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, while the US opposes his rule; Russia opposes US involvement with Ukraine, and is pushing back against NATO support. China is exerting its power in the Far East. It is developing its navy and making claims of control for much of the South China Sea, going so far as to add fill to atolls, thereby turning them into islands on which it is building air bases to strengthen its claim.

这些行动反映了世界秩序的变化。美国自20世纪80年代前苏联解体以来建立的经济和政治霸权(几乎完全的主导地位)已经终结,中国、欧盟和俄罗斯填补了这一空白。即使是委内瑞拉和玻利维亚等相对较小的国家,也觉得可以对美国嗤之以鼻——称其为纸老虎,时代已经过去了。这样的结论为时过早:美国仍然是世界主导力量,但世界高度复杂,其力量有限。美国不再是世界霸主。

Such actions reflect a changing world order. The United States economic and political hegemony (almost total dominance), which developed with the breakup of the former Soviet Union in the 1980s, has ended, and China, the European Union, and Russia have filled the void. Even relatively small nations, such as Venezuela and Bolivia, have felt themselves able to thumb their noses at the United States—calling it a paper tiger whose time has passed. Such conclusions are premature: The United States remains the dominant power in the world, but the world is highly complex and that power is limited. The US is no longer the world hegemon.

世界事务的复杂性可以从“阿拉伯之春”中看出——这是一系列反对阿拉伯独裁领导人的民众起义,这些领导人不允许举行自由选举。在处理这些起义时,美国发挥的作用有限;有人称之为“幕后领导”。美国支持起义,但在其他国家承诺参与并同意发挥主导作用之前,美国没有直接介入。例如,在利比亚,直到周边阿拉伯国家组成的阿拉伯联盟承诺推翻旧政权后,美国才介入。即便如此,美国也只为北约提供后备支持,允许其他北约国家在为起义提供的轰炸支持中发挥主导作用。美国在叙利亚也发挥了同样有限的作用,这也是俄罗斯能够维持一位与其友好的叙利亚领导人执政的原因之一。

The complexity of world affairs can be seen in the Arab Spring—a series of popular revolts against autocratic Arab leaders who did not allow free elections. In dealing with these revolts the United States took a limited role; some called it “leading from behind.” It supported the rebellions but withheld direct involvement until other nations had committed themselves to an effort and agreed to take lead roles. Thus, for example, in Libya, the United States did not get involved until the Arab League, a group of surrounding Arab countries, had committed themselves to the overthrow of the old regime. Even then, the United States provided only backup support for NATO, allowing other NATO countries to take a lead role in the bombing support provided for the rebellion. The United States took a similarly limited role in Syria, which is one of the reasons why Russia was able to maintain a Syrian leader friendly to it in power.

其结果也令人担忧。叙利亚和利比亚都经历了内战,局势远不如从前稳定。数十万难民离开这些国家,试图移民到其他更安全的国家。这些内战使得伊斯兰国(IS,前身为ISIS)等激进恐怖组织占领了这两个国家的大部分地区,迫使美国卷入其中。打击IS的战斗虽然消除了其对领土的控制,但并未彻底消灭IS,该组织仍然是一个在世界各地袭击目标的危险恐怖组织。看来,无论是身先士卒还是幕后指挥,都无法有效应对其他国家复杂的政治冲突。

The results have also been problematic. Both Syria and Libya have experienced civil war and are far less stable than they were before. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have left those countries, attempting to immigrate to other safer countries. These civil wars allowed militant terrorist groups, such as the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), to take over large sections of both of those countries, forcing the United States into the fight. The fight against IS eliminated its control over territory, but did not eliminate IS, which remains a dangerous terrorist group that attacks targets around the world. It seems that neither leading from the front, nor leading from behind, provides a good answer to dealing with the complex political strife in other countries.

特朗普总统的“美国优先”政策体现了一种不同的领导力;它强调美国需要在协议中取得更好的结果,但不会在许多有争议的领域大力施加影响力。拜登总统的政策很可能更像奥巴马总统和布什总统,试图在美国目标和美国实力之间取得平衡。好战的推文会减少,而隐蔽的外交会增多。

President Trump’s America First policy was a different type of leadership; it involved making strong statements about the need for the United States to get better outcomes in agreements, but not pushing hard to exert influence in many contested areas. President Biden’s policy will most likely be more like President Obama’s and Bush’s, which will attempt to balance US goals with US power. There are fewer belligerent tweets and more covert diplomacy.

本章将在为维护国际关系而建立的国际机构的具体背景下,探讨战争与和平的广泛问题。我们还将研究这些机构与美国外交政策的关系,并探讨为什么避免战争如此困难,以及为什么尽管如此,我们仍不断努力避免战争。

In this chapter we consider the broad issues of war and peace in the specific context of the international institutions that have developed to help maintain international relations. We also examine how these institutions are related to US foreign policy, and explore why it is so hard to avoid war, and why, despite that, we continually try to do so.

战争问题

The Problem of War

战争是地狱。除了伤亡和数万亿美元的损失,战争还带来了巨大的社会和文化变革。第一次世界大战为前苏联共产主义的成功铺平了道路,引发了20世纪30年代的大萧条,并释放出催生意大利法西斯主义和德国国家社会主义(纳粹主义)的力量。同样,第二次世界大战改变了世界的本质,终结了殖民帝国体系。同样,美国最近发动的战争的结果也与美国政府大多数人发动战争时的预期大相径庭,这些战争的全部影响在未来许多年内都难以知晓。

War is hell. Besides the lives lost and the trillions of dollars spent, war brings about enormous social and cultural changes. World War I paved the way for the success of communism in the former USSR, it helped to bring on the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it unleashed forces that produced fascism in Italy and National Socialism (Nazism) in Germany. Similarly, World War II changed the nature of the world, bringing an end to the colonial empire system. Likewise, the recent US wars have led to quite different results than anticipated by most in the US government when they began them, and the full effects of those wars will not be known for many years.

战争的原因

The Causes of War

关于战争,很少有事情是确定的,但似乎不可避免地是对方挑起了战争,而所谓的战争原因会掩盖其他潜在原因。分析战争原因并非一项可以武断地进行的任务。我们可以指出许多因素在起作用,也可以推断这些因素是如何运作的,但我们无法准确地制定任何公式来充分解释、评估和关联国际不和背后的诸多压力、条件、情绪、野心和做法。十九世纪颇具影响力的德国将军和军事战略家卡尔·冯·克劳塞维茨认为:“战争不过是政治手段的另一种延续。” 当和平手段无法实现其目标时,各国就会考虑使用武力。

Few things are certain about war, but it seems that inevitably it is the other side that started it, and that the stated cause of the war will mask other underlying causes. Analyzing the causes of war is not a task about which a person can afford to be dogmatic. We can point to many forces at work and can reason as to how the forces work, but we cannot with exactitude draft any formula that will fully explain, evaluate, and relate the many pressures, conditions, emotions, ambitions, and practices behind international discord. Karl von Clausewitz, an influential German general and military strategist of the nineteenth century, argued that “war is merely a continuation of politics by other means.” When peaceful methods do not accomplish their objectives, countries consider force.

一般来说,识别那些可能引发战争的力量比解释或评估它们更容易。可能导致战争的因素包括:国家对权力的渴望、经济竞争、宗教和政治分歧(例如也门和苏丹的情况)、社会动荡、政治和军事领导人的野心、对革命意识形态的狂热信仰(例如一些中东国家)、不同群体之间激烈的种族对抗、对安全或领土的渴望(例如以色列)、维护国家荣誉的需要,或者仅仅是对另一个国家意图的错误认识。

Generally speaking, identifying forces that tend to bring about war is easier than explaining or evaluating them. Factors that may contribute to bringing on war include the desire of a nation for power, economic rivalries, religious and political divisions (such as those in Yemen and Sudan), social unrest, the ambitions of political and military leaders, fanatical devotion to revolutionary ideologies (as in some Middle Eastern countries), intense ethnic rivalry among various groups, the desire for security or territory (as in Israel), the need to protect a country’s national honor, or simply mistaken ideas about another country’s intentions.

由于国家是人类的产物,探究战争的根源在于人类的本性。尽管心理学家和生物学家承认,战争似乎反映了人类的冲动和情感——愤怒、恐惧、怀疑和沮丧——但普遍的观点认为,人类并非生来就需要战争来满足其基本驱动力。人们认为,人类发动战争更多地取决于后天习得的态度、信仰和观点,而非其与生俱来的本性。

Because states are the work of human beings, inquiry into the causes of war goes back to the nature of human beings. Although psychologists and biologists admit that war may seem to reflect the impulses and emotions of humans—anger, fear, suspicion, and frustration—the general opinion is that people are not so made that they require war for the satisfaction of their basic drives. Their war making is believed to depend more on acquired attitudes, beliefs, and points of view than on their inherent nature.

联合国维和人员在工作

© 美国海军照片,由大众传播专家一等兵戴维·A·弗雷奇/维基百科提供

UN peacekeepers at work.

© U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class David A. Frech/Wikipedia

民族国家,正如公众舆论及其领导人所代表的那样,可能很敏感,容易受到冒犯,并迅速采取报复行动。在2003年的伊拉克战争中,一旦美国认定萨达姆·侯赛因藏有“大规模杀伤性武器”,谈判就毫无结果,尽管最终伊拉克显然没有这种武器。

The nation-state, as typified by public opinion and by its leaders, may be sensitive, quick to take offense, and hasty to retaliate. In the 2003 Iraq War, once the United States had decided that Saddam Hussein was harboring “weapons of mass destruction,” negotiations proved fruitless, even though in the end it was clear that Iraq had no such weapons.

在国家内部、社群内部,甚至整个国家,某些条件往往会在特定时期增加战争的可能性。一个国家的贫困可能导致动荡不安,从而滋生内乱,进而引发国际战争或导致独裁统治,加剧战争状态。一个国家内部的纷争或经济衰退,可能导致政府为了建立民族团结,或转移人们对无法解决的内部问题的注意力。当一个国家内部滋生军国主义精神时,就像20世纪30年代的德国一样,引发战争相对容易。同样的军国主义精神在当今的中东地区也存在,尽管程度较轻,这也是该地区成为众多战争爆发地的原因之一,也是未来可能出现更多动乱的原因。

Within states or within the community or states as a whole, certain conditions often add to the chances of war at any given time. Poverty in a nation may produce a restlessness that breeds civil strife, and this in turn may result in international war or lead to dictatorships that foster warlike conditions. Dissension or economic depression within a state may cause governments to welcome war in order to establish national unity or to create a diversion from internal problems incapable of solution. When a spirit of militarism has been developed within a nation, as it had in Germany in the 1930s, touching off a war is relatively simple. That same spirit of militarism exists, although to a lesser extent, in the Middle East today, which is one of the reasons that area has been the site of numerous wars and is also why it is likely to be the site of more trouble in the future.

国际社会中,一些容易引发战争的条件包括严重的意识形态分歧,就像20世纪90年代初期前苏联及其盟友与美国及其盟友之间的分歧一样。21世纪初,某些群体之间的宗教差异正在演变成极易引发战争的意识形态分歧。

Among conditions in the international community conducive to war is a sharp ideological split, like the one that, up until the early 1990s, existed between the former Soviet Union and its allies on the one hand and the United States and its allies on the other. In the early 2000s, the religious differences among certain groups are turning into ideological splits that are highly conducive to war.

国际社会存在着大规模的权力真空,这是另一种危险的情况,这种情况往往发生在一个帝国刚刚崩塌或一个联盟破裂之时。因此,苏联解体虽然减少了前苏联与美国之间的意识形态摩擦,却在东欧和前苏联境内制造了无数的火药桶。它也改变了国际政治格局,缺乏有效的制衡力量来制衡美国,使得美国可以发动小规模战争,而无需担心其他国家的严重报复。这并没有缓解紧张局势。相反,在许多观察家看来,美国肆意使用武力既助长了恐怖主义,也助长了恐怖主义在许多国家获得的支持。因此,恐怖主义可以被视为一种报复行为。

The existence of a power vacuum of sizable proportions is another hazardous condition in the world community, and it is frequently found when an empire has just been demolished or an alliance has broken down. Thus, the breakup of the Soviet Union, while reducing the ideological friction between the former Soviet Union and the United States, produced numerous tinderboxes in eastern Europe and in the former Soviet Union itself. It also changed international political dynamics, and there was no effective counterbalance to the United States, allowing the United States to enter into small wars without any expectation of serious reprisals from other countries. This did not reduce tensions. Instead, in many observers’ eyes, the United States’ unbridled use of power has contributed both to terrorism and to the support that terrorism gets in a number of countries. Thus, terrorism may be seen as a type of reprisal.

最后,一个民族国家的突然崛起,挑战另一个民族国家,往往会导致冲突。希腊历史学家修昔底德指出了这一点,并称之为“修昔底德 陷阱” ——对另一个国家实力增长的恐惧导致其采取战争行动。中国近期的崛起具备了“修昔底德陷阱”的所有特征。

Finally, the sudden rise of a nation state that challenges another often leads to conflict. This was pointed out by the Greek Historian Thucydides, and has acquired the name the Thucydides Trap—when fear of growth of another country’s power leads to actions that lead to war. Chinas recent rise has all the makings of the Thucydides Trap.

解决战争问题的方法

Approaches to the Problem of War

纵观历史,大多数人或许都渴望和平,尽管在某些部落社会中,战争——与战舞、猎头和收集头皮等习俗相结合——成为了群体文化不可或缺的一部分。战争带来了危险、刺激和赢得声望的机会,赋予了生活意义。然而,对和平的追求至少可以追溯到圣经先知以赛亚的长远展望,即“国不举刀攻击国,他们也不再学习战事”。

Throughout history, most people have probably desired peace, though in some tribal societies war—in combination with customs such as war dances, headhunting, and scalp collection— became an integral part of the group culture. War helped to give life meaning by providing danger, excitement, and opportunities for winning prestige. Nevertheless, the quest for peace goes back at least to the biblical prophet Isaiah’s long look ahead to the time when “nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

自中世纪晚期民族国家开始发展以来,许多诗人、哲学家和政治家都提出了维护和平的方案。这些和平缔造者包括但丁、法国国王亨利四世、威廉·佩恩和伊曼纽尔·康德。但这些方案都缺乏实际意义,既未能深入人心,也未能得到政府的认真考虑。

Ever since nation-states began to develop in the late Middle Ages, various poets, philosophers, and politicians have presented plans for maintaining peace. These peacemakers include Dante, King Henry IV of France, William Penn, and Immanuel Kant. But none of the plans were practical, nor did they reach the masses or receive serious consideration from governments.

外交:争端在人与人之间是不可避免的,至少看起来是不可避免的,无论是恃强凌弱者还是弱者。与其争吵,不如进行理性的讨论,在国际层面上,这被称为外交。国家间的问题首先由外交官处理,通常都能成功。然而,外交偶尔也会失败。由于失控的严重争端可能导致战争,因此,真正渴望和平的国家只要还有一丝解决的希望,就会让外交官继续工作。纵观民族国家的历史,外交在避免战争方面发挥了巨大作用。

Diplomacy Disputes are, or at least seem to be, inevitable among people, bullies and ninety-pound weaklings alike. The alternative to a slugfest is reasonable discussion, which on the international level is called diplomacy. The problems of states are first of all handled by diplomats, usually with success. Occasionally, however, diplomacy fails. Because a serious dispute that gets out of hand can result in war, states genuinely anxious to stay at peace will keep their diplomats at work as long as any hope of a solution exists. Throughout the history of the nation-state, diplomacy has done much to avoid war.

外交对和平的贡献不仅包括争端各方的努力,也包括第三国的努力。当争端双方陷入僵局,且不利的局势即将出现时,一个无利害关系的国家可能会试图让争端各方进行进一步谈判;或者,当第三国进一步介入争端时,它可能会尝试调解——这是一种要求调解政府提出解决方案建议的程序,从而关注所涉及问题的是非曲直。例如,欧洲国家曾试图调解美国和伊朗之间关于伊朗核电计划的争端。同样,美国也一直在试图调解以色列和巴勒斯坦权力机构之间持续的争端。

The contributions of diplomacy to peace include the efforts of third states as well as the parties to disputes. A disinterested state may try to get disputants together for further negotiations when they reach a deadlock and when unfortunate developments appear imminent; or, injecting itself a little further into a controversy, a third state may attempt mediation—a procedure that calls on the mediating government to make suggestions for solutions, thus concerning itself with the merits of the issues involved. For example, European countries tried to mediate a dispute between the United States and Iran about Iran’s nuclear power program. Similarly, the United States has been trying to mediate the ongoing dispute between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

2017年,特朗普总统宣布美国将把使馆迁至以色列已定为首都的耶路撒冷,这使得美国在巴勒斯坦和以色列之间的调解角色变得更加困难。巴勒斯坦人对此表示反对,认为此举似乎对耶路撒冷问题进行了预先判断,而这些问题本应是巴以最终和平协议的一部分。作为回应,他们表示,他们将不再看到美国被称为“诚实的经纪人”,这个词用来描述争端中的中立调解者。

The US role of mediator between the Palestinians and the Israelis was made more difficult in 2017 when President Trump announced that the United States would move its embassy to Jerusalem, which Israel had made its capital. The Palestinians objected since that move seemed to prejudge issues about Jerusalem that were supposed to be part of a final peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. In response, they said that they would no longer see the United States as an “honest broker,” which is a term used to describe a neutral mediator in a dispute.

近年来,东帝汶、肯尼亚、尼泊尔、索马里、苏丹和尼日利亚等许多国家,无论是通过独立行动还是通过联合国,都依赖外部调解活动。当调解破裂时,调解员必须做出选择:是积极介入,派遣维和部队或军事力量,以达成他们认为公正的问题解决方案;还是在少数情况下,非常不情愿地放弃,承认某些局势至少在一段时间内不受外界影响。

In recent years, a number of countries such as Timor Leste, Kenya, Nepal, Somalia, Sudan, and Nigeria—both independently and through the United Nations—have relied on outside mediation activities. When mediation breaks down, the mediators must choose whether to become actively involved by providing peacekeeping forces or military force to achieve what they consider to be a fair resolution to the problems, or, less frequently and very reluctantly, to give up, admitting that some situations are, at least for a time, immune to outside influence.

国际政府如上所述,尽管各国政府自身存在诸多问题,但通常情况下,它们会通过提供替代机制来解决争端,从而维持其境内的秩序。因此,一些旨在防止民族国家间战争的提议自然而然地涉及到国际政府,或者至少是某种除战争之外的国际层面解决争端的方案。这些方案包括国际法院和联合国(UN)。联合国是一个由独立国家组成的组织,负责讨论国际问题,有时也会采取行动。这些机构共同构成了世界政府的雏形,尽管各国通常不会理会这些决定。因此,当联合国未能正式批准对伊拉克开战时,美国仍然发动了攻击,一些美国政府官员宣称联合国无关紧要。然而,后来,当美国要求伊朗终止其核计划时,它却以联合国的权威作为伊朗必须遵守的理由。 2017年末,美国宣布减少向联合国缴纳会费,因为联合国谴责美国正式承认耶路撒冷为以色列首都,但随着2020年拜登总统当选,美国与联合国的关系有所改善。

International Government As we have seen, governments, for all their problems, generally maintain order within their boundaries by providing alternative mechanisms for settling disputes. Thus, it is only natural that some of the proposals for preventing war between nationstates have involved an international government, or at least some option other than war, for settling disputes on an international level. These include the international courts and the United Nations (UN), an organization of independent states that debates, and sometimes does something about, international problems. Together, these institutions comprise the rudimentary beginnings of world government, although when nations do not like the decisions, they generally disregard them. Thus, when the UN failed to officially sanction war against Iraq, the United States attacked anyway, with some US government officials declaring the UN irrelevant. However, later, when the United States wanted Iran to end its nuclear program, it relied on the authority of the UN as the reason why Iran had to comply. In late 2017, the United States announced that it was reducing its payments to the UN because the UN had denounced the United States’ formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel but with President Biden’s election in 2020, the US’s relationship with the UN improved.

国际法与国际法院几个世纪以来,人们一直秉持着由统一的法律体系来构建世界的理想。古希腊城邦在外交、条约和战争等事务上,彼此之间适用一套基本的规则。罗马则设有万民法(jus gentium),或称“论坛”(forum),以规范帝国内部不同民族之间的关系。几个世纪前,民族国家体系一旦建立,便开始构建自身的法律体系。荷兰人雨果·格劳秀斯通常被称为现代国际法(即关于国家在相互关系中的权利和义务的规则体系)的创始人,因为他在其著作中对当时的法律进行了系统的整理和讨论。

International Law and International Courts For centuries, the ideal of a world ordered by a unified system of law has persisted. The ancient Greek city-states applied among themselves an elemental body of rules relating to matters such as diplomacy, treaties, and war. In Rome there was a jus gentium, or forum, to regulate the relations of the diverse peoples within the empire. As soon as the system of nation-states got under way centuries ago, it began constructing for itself a body of law. Hugo Grotius, a Dutchman, usually is referred to as the founder of modern international law—the system of rules on rights and duties of states in their mutual relations—because of his systematic organization and discussion of the law of his day in his

著名著作《战争与和平法》(1625年)。然而,人们往往强调国家应该做什么,而不是其习惯行为。

famous book entitled The Law of War and Peace (1625). Often, however, emphasis was put on what nations ought to do rather than on their customary behavior.

到了十九世纪,国际法讨论开始越来越强调国家间关系的实际实践,而较少关注从抽象正义的角度看国家应该如何行事。如今,以习惯、条约、公约和正式协议形式存在的既定程序构成了国际法的主要基础。国际法的议题范围广泛,涵盖了诸如承认新国家和新政府、外交特权与豁免、领土的取得、国籍、引渡、外国人待遇、商业、国家管辖权、国家责任、战争的爆发、战争的进行以及战争对条约的影响等诸多方面。

By the nineteenth century, the actual practices of states in their relations to one another began to be stressed more and more in discussions of international law, and less attention was paid to what they ought to do from the point of view of abstract justice. Today, established procedures in the form of custom, treaties, conventions, and formal agreements are the chief basis of international law. Its subject matter is extensive, embracing items such as the recognition of new states and governments, diplomatic privileges and immunities, the acquisition of territory, nationality, extradition, the treatment of aliens, commerce, the jurisdiction of states, the responsibility of states, the beginning of war, the conduct of war, and the effect of war on treaties.

国际法的作用和局限性国际法在维护国家间秩序与和平方面的作用始终有限。尽管联合国制定了与战争和国家国际行为有关的法律,但迄今为止尚未建立国际刑法和起诉体系。为了执行这些法律,联合国设立了国际法院(通常称为世界法院)和国际刑事法院。这些国际法涉及战争罪和危害人类罪,定义为“严重侵犯人类尊严或严重羞辱或贬低一个或多个人,是特别令人憎恶的罪行”。关于什么是战争罪或某种罪行是否达到危害人类罪的程度,经常会有争论,尤其是当被告仍然掌权时。但被废黜的领导人或在战争中失败的领导人经常会发现自己受到此类指控。

The Usefulness and the Limitations of International Law The usefulness of international law in the maintenance of order and peace among nations has always been limited. No international system of criminal law and prosecution has been established to date, although the UN has established laws related to war and international conduct of countries. To enforce these laws it has created an International Court of Justice (commonly known as the World Court) and an International Criminal Court. These international laws concern war crimes and crimes against humanity, defined as crimes that “are particularly odious offenses in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings.” Debates often arise about what a war crime is or whether a crime reaches the level of a crime against humanity, especially when those accused are still in power. But deposed leaders, or leaders who have lost a war, often find themselves subject to such charges.

一个国家接受国际法院的司法裁决是自愿的,而国家共同体缺乏有效的手段来执行法律。违反者可能受到受害方的威胁,可能成为报复措施的对象,最终甚至可能在战争中受到挑战。但这些程序并非有序,无法与国家在国内执行法律的方法相提并论。例如,在20世纪80年代中期,当美国在中美洲,尤其是在尼加拉瓜的政策被裁定违反国际法时,它却干脆无视了裁决。

A country’s submission to an international court’s justice is voluntary, and there are no effective means available to the community of states for the enforcement of the law. A violator may be threatened by the injured party, it may be the object of retaliatory measures, and in the last analysis it may be challenged in war. But these are not orderly procedures comparable to the methods possessed by a state for enforcing laws internally. For example, in the mid-1980s, when the United States was found to be in violation of international law with its policy in Central America, and especially in Nicaragua, it simply ignored the ruling.

尽管国家共同体存在这些缺陷,但国际法的作用仍不应低估。各国或许可以违反法律并逃脱惩罚,但它们更倾向于不这样做,因为它们不愿被视为违法者。不良声誉对一个国家有害,即使是像美国这样的强国也是如此。各国在彼此沟通和谈判中,无论是主张权利还是履行义务,都不断援引法律标准,这一事实表明它们至少希望表现出守法的姿态。

Despite these deficiencies of the community of states, the usefulness of international law should not be underestimated. Nations may be able to violate the law and get away with it, but they much prefer not to do so, for they do not like to be regarded as lawbreakers. A bad reputation can be harmful to a state, even a powerful one such as the United States. The fact that nations constantly appeal to the standard of the law in their communications and negotiations with each other, both in claiming rights and in meeting their obligations, is evidence that they at least like to appear law-abiding.

近代历史上,许多国家都意识到因持续违反国际法而声名狼藉的代价高昂。例如,南非在包括经济制裁和谴责在内的巨大压力下,最终结束了长达40多年的种族隔离制度。最近,伊朗和朝鲜采取的行动也引发了国际社会的谴责和联合国的制裁。

In recent history, many states discovered the high costs of having a bad reputation (due to a consistent violation of international law). For example, South Africa finally ended more than four decades of apartheid in response to significant pressure that included economic sanctions and condemnations. More recently, Iran and North Korea have undertaken actions that have led to international condemnation and UN sanctions.

联合国

The United Nations

联合国是我们最接近世界政府的机构。联合国的成立是为了响应二战后人们对一个能够维护和平的世界组织的高涨热情。1941年8月24日,英国首相温斯顿·丘吉尔和美国总统富兰克林·罗斯福在著名的《大西洋宪章》中宣布建立“永久的普遍安全体系”。1942年1月1日,即美国参战后不久,联合国签署了《大西洋宪章》宣言,确认了《大西洋宪章》的目标。这份宣言为1945年10月24日成立的联合国命名。根据《大西洋宪章》第一条,联合国的主要宗旨是维护“国际和平及安全”。

The United Nations is the closest institution we have to a world government. The UN was formed in reaction to a surge of enthusiasm after World War II for a world organization able to keep the peace. On August 24, 1941, Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Great Britain and US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced in the famous Atlantic Charter the need for a “permanent system of general security.” On January 1, 1942, soon after the United States entered the war, a Declaration by United Nations was signed confirming the objectives of the Atlantic Charter. This declaration gave the UN, which was established on October 24, 1945, its name. The primary purpose of the UN, according to Article 1 of the charter, is maintaining “international peace and security.”

联合国并非第一个旨在维护和平的全球性组织的尝试。第一次世界大战后,一些国家首次在1919年将解决战争问题的全面方案写入了《国际联盟盟约》。该组织失败了,然而,它未能获得使其成为一个切实可行的世界组织所需的国际支持。尽管美国总统伍德罗·威尔逊提议成立国际联盟,但美国从未加入。在多次试图利用国际联盟作为仲裁工具但均以失败告终后,国际联盟于1939年解散。

The UN is not the first attempt at a worldwide organization designed to keep the peace. The first comprehensive approach to the problem of war by a group of states was written into the Covenant of the League of Nations in 1919 following World War I. This organization failed, however, to receive the international support necessary to make it a viable world organization. Despite the fact that US President Woodrow Wilson proposed the League, it never became a member. After numerous ineffective attempts to use the League as an arbitration tool, it dissolved in 1939.

联合国安全理事会通过决议

© Alamy

The Security Council of the United Nations adopting a resolution.

© Alamy

联合国最重要的机构是安全理事会、大会和秘书处。安全理事会“负有维护国际和平与安全主要责任”的立法机构,也是联合国最有权力的机构。安理会处理国际争端,并裁定何时发生侵略或何时对和平构成威胁。它由十五个国家组成,其中五个——中华人民共和国、法国、俄罗斯(接管了前苏联的席位​​)、英国和美国——为常任理事国。其余十个理事国为非常任理事国,由大会选举产生,任期为两年,选举采用交错方式,每年有五个新国家就任。

The most important organs or the UN are the Security Council, the General Assembly, and the Secretariat. The Security Council—the legislative body that has “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”—is the most powerful organ of the UN. Tire council deals with international disputes and decides when aggression is taking place or when there is a threat to the peace. It is composed of fifteen nations, of which five— the People’s Republic of China, France, Russia (which took over the seat of the former Soviet Union), the United Kingdom, and the United States—are permanent members. The other ten members are nonpermanent and are elected by the General Assembly for terms of two years, with the elections staggered so that five new countries come into office each year.

安全理事会必须获得九个成员国的赞成票才能通过。如果某个问题属于程序性问题,任何九个成员国均可通过,但在所有其他问题上,九个成员国必须包括安理会所有五个常任理事国。在重大问题上,五个常任理事国均拥有否决权——即禁止或阻止做出决定的投票。这种否决权被相对频繁地使用,削弱了安理会在争议性问题上做出决定的能力。例如,2020年,美国否决了一项呼吁对参与恐怖主义相关活动的人员进行起诉、改造和重返社会的动议。尽管其他十四个成员国投票支持该计划,但美国的否决阻止了该法案的通过。

The Security Council must have the affirmative vote of nine of its members. When an issue is procedural in nature, any nine suffice, but in all other matters, the nine must include all five permanent members of the council. On major questions, each of the five permanent members has a veto—a vote that forbids or blocks the making of a decision. This veto has been used relatively often, reducing the Security Council’s ability to make decisions on controversial issues. For example, in 2020, the United States vetoed a motion calling for the prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration of people involved in terrorism-related activities. Although the fourteen other members voted in favor of the program, the United States’ veto prevented the legislation.

同样,2012年,当大多数国家支持将巴勒斯坦领土纳入联合国的提议时,美国威胁要否决该提议,这将阻止其通过,因为这一改变需要得到安理会的批准。然而,美国无法阻止巴勒斯坦领土的地位从无投票权的观察员“实体”转变为无投票权的观察员国,因为这只需要联合国大会的支持。这一改变使巴勒斯坦人得以加入联合国组织,并在国际刑事法院起诉以色列。

Similarly, in 2012, when most countries favored a proposal to make the Palestinian territory a member of the UN, the United States threatened to veto it, which would prevent it, since such a change required approval by the Security Council. However, it could not stop the change in the status of the Palestinian territory from a nonvoting observer “entity” to that of a nonvoting observer state, since that required only General Assembly support. This change allowed Palestinians to join UN organizations, and to pursue cases against Israel at the International Criminal Court.

大会是联合国的立法机构,由所有会员国的代表组成。大会每年召开一次会议,审议“本宪章范围内之任何问题或事项,或有关本宪章所规定任何机关之职权”。大会不具备立法权,但负责讨论各种国际问题。大会作出的决定,以建议的形式,提交给各国或其他机关。

The General Assembly is a UN legislative body that includes representatives of all the member states. It meets annually and concerns itself “with any questions or matters within the scope of the present charter or relating to the powers and functions of any organs provided for in the present charter.” It has no legislative power, but it discusses a wide variety of international problems. When it arrives at a decision, it is in the form of a recommendation, either to states or to other organs.

秘书处是联合国的执行机构。其领导由秘书长领导。秘书长由大会选举产生,任期通常为五年。2022年秘书长是安东尼奥·古特雷斯。秘书处履行各种组织、研究、出版和传播职能,秘书长在国家间外交中发挥着重要作用。

The Secretariat is the UN executive arm. It is headed by the secretary-general, who is elected by the General Assembly and traditionally holds the post for a period of five years. In 2022 the secretary-general was Antonio Guterres. The Secretariat carries out a variety of organizational, research, publication, and communication functions, and the secretary-general plays an important role in diplomacy among states.

联合国值得吗?

Is the UN Worth It?

联合国成立之初,人们曾寄予厚望,希望它能够成为解决国家间争端、避免暴力冲突的工具,并通过对话避免未来战争。最初,联合国由美国及其盟友主导,前苏联则被排除在外。由于持有不同意见,苏联曾行使否决权,阻止了各种各样的活动。随着联合国从最初的50个成员国扩张到如今的约193个成员国,该组织的总体基调也发生了变化。新成员国往往与美国意见相左,在20世纪70年代和80年代,联合国经常与美国政策相悖。这导致美国对联合国的支持力度远不如前。例如,美国选择不签署联合国制定的《海洋法条约》,并于1984年退出联合国教育、科学及文化组织(教科文组织),声称该组织被过度政治化,并且“对自由社会机构,特别是那些保护新闻自由、自由市场以及最重要的个人人权的机构抱有根深蒂固的敌意”。一位助理国务卿表示:“当教科文组织回归其最初的原则时,美国将有能力重返教科文组织。”

When the UN began, there was great hope for using it as a vehicle for resolving disputes among nations without resort to violence, and for discussion that could prevent war in the future. Initially, the UN was dominated by the United States and its allies, with the former Soviet Union the odd country out. Because it had different views, the Soviet Union used its veto to stop a wide variety of activities. As the UN expanded from its initial fifty members to its approximately 193 members today, the general tenor of the organization changed. The new states tended to disagree with the United States, and in the 1970s and 1980s the UN was often at odds with US policy. This led the United States to be far less supportive. For example, the United States also chose not to sign the Law of the Sea treaty developed by the UN, and it withdrew from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1984, claiming extraneous politicization and “an endemic hostility toward the institutions of free society, particularly those that protect the free press, free markets, and, above all, individual human rights.” An assistant secretary of state said, “When UNESCO returns to its original principles, the United States would be in a position to return to UNESCO.”

这一变化体现在美国在安理会的投票中。在联合国成立初期,美国从未使用过否决权,但在20世纪70年代和80年代,美国却相对频繁地使用否决权来阻止联合国采取行动。20世纪80年代末,联合国的性质与70年代和80年代初至中期相比发生了变化。前苏联和中国的变化使得安理会更有可能达成一致,联合国也更多地反映了美国的意愿。联合国内部对美国意愿的这种一致,赋予了美国维护和平和实现其国际目标的行动更多合法性。

This change was reflected in US voting in the Security Council. Whereas in the early years of the UN, the United States never used its veto, in the 1970s and 1980s the United States used its veto power relatively often to prevent action by the UN. In the late 1980s, the nature of the UN changed from what it was in the 1970s and early to mid-1980s. Changes in the former Soviet Union and China made agreement in the Security Council more likely, and the UN more often reflected US desires. This agreement within the UN with regard to US desires gave more legitimacy to US actions in maintaining the peace and achieving its international goals.

在乔治·W·布什总统任期内,联合国并不支持美国的许多立场,而美国的反应是撤军——即使不是事实上的,至少也是原则上的——并寻求其他处理国际争端的方式。这正是它在2003年所做的。当联合国明确表示不会批准对伊拉克发动战争以消除大规模杀伤性武器,而是希望给予联合国武器核查人员更多时间来确定伊拉克是否拥有此类武器时,美国干脆与其所谓的“自愿联盟”一起单独参战。

During the presidency of George W, Bush, the UN was not supportive of many US positions, and the US reaction was to withdraw—if not in fact, at least in principle—and look to other means of handling international disputes. That’s precisely what it did in 2003. When it was clear that the UN would not sanction war against Iraq to eliminate weapons of mass destruction, but instead wanted to give UN weapons inspectors more time to determine whether Iraq had such weapons, the United States simply went to war on its own together with what it called the Coalition of the Willing.

2008年巴拉克·奥巴马当选后,美国对联合国的态度变得更加支持和合作,美国与联合国的关系也得到了改善。但唐纳德·特朗普当选后,情况发生了变化,他再次使美国与联合国的许多立场发生冲突。例如,美国在2017年减少了对联合国的资助,以报复联合国对美国驻以色列大使馆的批评。这一举措至关重要,因为美国的捐款略高于联合国预算的五分之一(见图22.1)。由于美国对联合国的巨额资助,联合国被迫关注美国的立场,并经常调整其立场,以更符合美国的意愿。与大多数其他机构一样,联合国也遵循经济学的黄金法则——“谁拥有黄金,谁就制定规则”。过去十年,联合国的资金来源发生了变化。具体而言,美国和日本的资金正在减少,而中国的资金正在增加。因此,未来联合国可能不会像过去那样对美国的立场做出回应,而会更多地关注中国的立场。这是中国在世界经济和全球事务中日益增强的作用的另一个例子。

With the election of Barack Obama in 2008, the US attitude toward the UN became much more supportive and cooperative, and the United States’ relationship with the UN improved. That changed with the election of Donald Trump who once again put the United States in conflict with many UN positions. For instance, the United States reduced its funding to the UN in 2017 in retaliation to the organizations criticism of the US embassy’s move to Israel. This is important because the US contribution makes up a bit over one-fifth of the UN’s budget (see Figure 22.1). Because of its large contribution to funding, the UN has been forced to take notice of the US position, and has often modified its positions in order to be more in accordance with US desires. The UN, like most other institutions, is subject to the golden law of economics—“He who’s got the gold makes the rules.” The UN funding sources have changed over the last decade. Specifically, the United States’ and Japan’s funding are decreasing and China’s funding is increasing. Tlius, in the future the UN will likely not be as responsive to US positions as it has been in the past, and a bit more responsive to China’s positions. This is another example of China’s growing role in the world economy and in global affairs.

图 22.12019 年至 2021 年联合国经费的大致摊款。

Figure 22.1Approximate assessments for paying for the United Nations, 2019-2021.

联合国在维持和平中的作用

The UN's Role in Keeping the Peace

联合国的支持者指出,尽管联合国存在诸多问题,但它仍然是我们拥有的唯一世界和平力量,因此它至关重要。为了理解它的重要性,让我们思考一下它如何为维护和平做出贡献,以及如何继续这样做。

Supporters of the UN point out that for all its problems, the UN is still the only world force for peace that we have, and therefore argue that it is important. To see its importance let’s consider how it has contributed to keeping the peace and how it can continue to do so.

当和平受到威胁、破坏或发生侵略行为时,安全理事会可对应受谴责的国家实施制裁——通过集体安全体系采取外交、经济或军事惩罚行动。《宪章》列出了三种强制措施:

In the event of a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the Security Council may invoke sanctions—diplomatic, economic, or military punitive actions undertaken through a collective security system—against the state that is to blame. The charter lists three types of coercive measures:

  1. 断绝外交关系
  2. Severance of diplomatic relations
  3. 完全或部分中断与异见国家的经济关系
  4. The complete or partial interruption of economic relations with the dissident state
  5. 使用武装力量
  6. The use of armed forces

外交制裁产生的压力通常有限。更强有力的经济制裁很少被尝试。它们分别在20世纪90年代和2011年分别对伊拉克和叙利亚实施。这些行动取得了部分成功。最近的几个例子则更为成功。例如,制裁在促使伊朗坐到谈判桌前发挥了重要作用,美国和联合国同意取消对伊朗的制裁,以换取伊朗限制其核计划。即使在特朗普总统宣布美国退出该协议后,伊朗仍未重启其核计划,因为欧洲试图抵消美国将重新实施的部分制裁。特朗普的希望是,他能达成一项更有利的协议,伊朗不仅要放弃其核计划,还要减少对美国认为支持恐怖主义的组织的支持。但这并没有发生,拜登总统试图找到一个可以接受的中间立场,以便与伊朗重新达成某种协议。

The amount of pressure that diplomatic sanctions produce would ordinarily be limited. The more powerful economic sanctions are seldom tried. They were imposed on Iraq in the 1990s and on Syria in 2011. These actions were partially successful. A couple of more recent examples have been more successful. For example, sanctions were instrumental in bringing Iran to the bargaining table, with the United States and the UN agreeing to eliminate their sanctions in return for Iran limiting its nuclear program. Even when President Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, Iran held back on restarting its nuclear program, as Europe tried to offset some of the US sanctions that would be reinstituted. Trumps hope was that he can gain an even better deal, in which Iran not only gives up its nuclear program, but one in which it also reduces support of groups that the United States sees as supporting terrorism. That didn’t happen, and President Biden attempted to find an acceptable middle ground to reenter some type of agreement with Iran.

近期制裁的另一个例子是,美国为回应朝鲜发展核武器计划而对其实施的严厉经济制裁。最初,这些制裁收效甚微;朝鲜领导人金正恩称其为“战争行为”,并扩大了该计划。这激起了特朗普总统的回应,并导致了双方激烈的言辞,正如我在本章开头所提到的。但随后,言辞停止了;两位领导人举行了会晤,正如特朗普总统所说,他们坠入了爱河。他们同意走向和平,以解除制裁为交换条件,从朝鲜消除核武器。这并没有发生,但朝鲜停止了战争威胁,并在谈判中采取了不那么好战的语气。

Another example of recent sanctions are the strong economic sanctions imposed on North Korea in response to its development of its nuclear weapons program. Initially, those sanctions had little effect; the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, called them an “act of war” and he expanded the program. That provoked a response from President Trump, and led to the harsh rhetoric on both sides that I began the chapter with. But then the rhetoric stopped; the two leaders had a meeting, and, as President Trump put it, they fell in love. They agreed to move toward peace, eliminating nuclear weapons from North Korea in exchange for a lifting of the sanctions. That didn’t happen, but North Korea stopped threatening war and adopted a less belligerent tone in negotiations.

军事制裁本应是联合国维和努力的最终手段。为了使该体系更加顺畅地运作,宪章规定联合国各成员国有义务向联合国军事力量提供力量,并在必要时由安全理事会负责确定各成员国对联合国维和行动的贡献。

Military sanctions are supposed to be the final recourse of the UN in its peacemaking efforts. To make the system function more smoothly, the charter imposes on each member of the organization the duty of contributing to the UN military force, with the Security Council responsible for defining each member’s contribution to the joint effort, should an occasion for military sanctions arise.

宪章中关于军事制裁的条款乍一看或许令人印象深刻,但实际上其作用有限。1950年6月25日朝鲜袭击韩国时,安理会未能动用任何军事力量,因为各方尚未就成员国应提供哪些援助达成协议。未能达成这些协议的原因是军事参谋委员会未能明确此类协议应体现的一般原则;目前尚无任何国家就任何可能采取的联合军事行动承担明确的义务。

Impressive as the charter provisions regarding military sanctions may appear at first glance, in fact they have been of limited value. When the North Koreans attacked South Korea on June 25, 1950, the Security Council had no military force on which it could draw because no agreements had been reached about what members were expected to provide. The failure to make those agreements had resulted from the inability of the Military Staff Committee to specify the general principles that such agreements should embody; no nation had yet undertaken a definite obligation with respect to any possible joint military action.

南北朝鲜之间的非军事区。

The demilitarized zone between South and North Korea.

当韩国遭到入侵的消息传来后,安理会立即召开会议处理此事。安理会紧急要求停止敌对行动并撤出入侵部队。由于两天后停火令仍未得到遵守,安理会着手对朝鲜实施军事制裁。如果当时苏联没有采取行动,这一行动无疑会遭到否决。苏联代表出席了会议,但几个月前,他们因台湾而非中国获得了联合国的中国席位而愤怒地退出了会议。由于苏联代表没有出席随后的安理会会议,安理会得以呼吁停火,并授权联合国领导的军事行动——朝鲜战争,这场战争从1950年持续到1953年。

When the report came that South Korea had been invaded, a meeting of the Security Council was immediately called to deal with the problem. The council urgently asked for a cessation of hostilities and a withdrawal of the invading troops. Because two days later the ceasefire order had not been respected, the Security Council set to work to apply military sanctions against North Korea. This action would undoubtedly have been vetoed by the former Soviet Union had its delegates been present, but months earlier they had withdrawn from the UN meetings in anger because Taiwan, rather than China, had been given the Chinese seat in the organization. Because the Soviet delegate was not present at the ensuing Security Council meeting, the council was able to call for a ceasefire and authorize a UN-led military action—the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953.

此后,联合国在维护和平方面取得了一些成功——例如苏伊士运河危机、帮助结束两伊战争以及帮助结束安哥拉内战;但也有一些失败。其中最大的失败涉及其维护中东和平的外交努力。当伊拉克入侵科威特时,联合国对伊拉​​克实施了经济制裁,并授权使用军事力量迫使伊拉克撤出科威特。这些授权是在安理会进行的,得到了​​前苏联的支持和中国的接受(这两个国家都拥有否决权)。

Since then, the UN has had some successes in keeping the peace—the Suez Canal Crisis, helping to end the Iran-Iraq War, and helping to end the internal conflict in Angola; it has also had failures. The largest of these failures involved its diplomatic attempt to keep the peace in the Middle East. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, the UN imposed economic sanctions against Iraq and authorized military force to achieve Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait. These authorizations occurred in the Security Council and were supported by the former USSR and accepted by China (both of which had veto power).

联合国希望经济制裁和战争威胁能够促成外交解决。然而,外交解决方案未能达成,联合国于1991年授权使用武力来执行指令。然而,联合国并没有建立一支联合国军事部队,而是直接授权美国领导一个联军对伊拉克开战。以美国为首的联军迅速赢得了战争,联合国在建立伊拉克投降框架方面发挥了关键作用。此外,联合国在援助战争难民和进行武器核查方面也发挥了重要作用。

The UN hoped the economic sanctions and the threat of war would bring about a diplomatic solution. No diplomatic solution was found, and in 1991 the UN authorized the use of force to achieve the directives. However, instead of establishing a UN military force, the UN simply authorized the United States to lead a coalition in a war against Iraq. Tire US-led forces quickly won the war, and the UN played a key role in establishing the framework under which Iraq surrendered. It also played an important role in assisting refugees from the war and in undertaking weapons inspections.

联合国未能维持这些武器核查。21世纪初,伊拉克驱逐了联合国核查人员,引发了激烈的外交谈判。2002年秋,美国敦促联合国向萨达姆·侯赛因发出最后通牒。2003年春,侯赛因允许武器核查人员重返伊拉克。尽管做出了这一让步,但美国对在寻找大规模杀伤性武器方面取得的进展并不满意。美国敦促联合国宣布伊拉克严重违反了先前的和平协议,并允许使用军事力量确保其遵守协议。

The UN did not maintain those weapons inspections, and in the early 2000s, Iraq expelled the UN inspectors, leading to intense diplomatic negotiations. In fall 2002, the United States pushed the UN to give Saddam Hussein an ultimatum, and in spring 2003, Hussein let the weapons inspectors back in to Iraq. Despite this concession, the United States was not satisfied with the progress made in finding weapons of mass destruction. The United States pushed the UN to declare Iraq in material breach of the earlier peace accord agreements and to allow the use of military force to ensure compliance.

当安理会明确表示不会授权使用武力时,美国与英国联合宣布联合国授权毫无必要,并攻击萨达姆·侯赛因,以“消除大规模杀伤性武器”,从而帮助保护世界免受恐怖主义侵害。针对此次袭击,欧洲掀起了大规模反战活动,尤其是在欧洲,绝大多数民众反对美英的单边行动。

When it became clear that the Security Council was not going to authorize force at this time, the United States, together with Great Britain, declared that a UN mandate was unnecessary and attacked Saddam Hussein to “eliminate weapons of mass destruction” and thereby help protect the world from terrorism. In response to the attack, there were significant anti-war activities, especially in Europe, where a large majority of the population opposed the US/UK unilateral action.

掌控局势后,美国几乎找不到大规模杀伤性武器——而这正是发动战争的既定理由。尽管如此,由于最初的进攻进展顺利,而且萨达姆·侯赛因被推翻,即使是许多反对战争的人也认为战争结果是一件好事,因为侯赛因曾是一位残暴的独裁者。侯赛因被推翻后,美国绝大多数民众立即支持了这场战争——这种“只要我们行动,我们为什么行动都无所谓”的战争理念。

Once in control, the United States found little in the way of weapons of mass destruction— the given reason for the war. Despite this, because the initial attack went well, and because Saddam Hussein was deposed, even many who opposed the war felt the outcome was a good thing, because Hussein had been a brutal dictator. Immediately after Husseins overthrow, a large majority of the US population supported it—the “it dussint matter why we dunnit as long as we wunnit” approach to war.

美国未经联合国批准发动战争后,掌控了伊拉克新政府组建的大部分进程,并将联合国排除在外。其本质是告诉联合国:“我们想做什么就做什么;如果你们纵容,我们就让你们参与;如果你们不纵容,我们无论如何都会做我们想做的事。”

After starting the war without UN approval, the United States took major control of the establishment of a new government in Iraq, freezing the UN out of much of the process. Essentially, it told the UN, “We will do what we want; if you condone it, we will let you play a role; if you don’t, we will do what we want anyway.”

这种态度令世界其他国家感到不满,美国的行动在美国以外引发了强烈的反美情绪。但人们也接受了“现实政治”——美国拥有无与伦比的军事实力——因此,如果美国决定动用这种实力,其他国家几乎无能为力。在许多人看来,联合国在维护世界和平与安全方面已经失去了任何有效作用。美国已经篡夺了它。尽管军事实力雄厚,但美国发现赢得和平比赢得战争困难得多。随着维护和平的困难变得巨大,美国重新回到联合国,寻求其帮助。

That attitude did not sit well with the rest of the world, and the United States actions generated significant anti-US feelings outside the United States. But there was also an acceptance of the “realpolitik”—the United States had unsurpassed military power—and thus there was little that other countries could do if the United States decided to use that power. In many people’s eyes, the UN had lost any effective role in providing for peace and security in the world. The United States had usurped it. Despite its military strength, the United States found that winning the peace was much more difficult than winning the war. As the difficulties of maintaining the peace became enormous, the United States went back to the UN, asking for its help.

当美国希望限制伊朗核计划以确保伊朗不发展核武器时,它再次向联合国求助。如果伊朗不终止其核计划,美国就赢得了联合国对伊朗实施制裁的支持,但为了赢得支持,美国必须降低要求,将这些要求限制在暂停其核协议的范围内,而不是限制其他活动,例如支持美国认为的恐怖组织或研发远程导弹。另一个体现美国与联合国互动方式的事件发生在2006年,当时以色列轰炸了黎巴嫩,以报复真主党(黎巴嫩境内的一个政治组织)俘虏了两名真主党士兵。世界上大多数国家都希望通过一项决议,要求以色列停止轰炸并实现停火。美国没有以色列不愿继续推进;相反,美国拖延了这一进程,给了以色列更多时间来实现其军事目标。最终,美国同意联合国派遣有限的维和部队,并同意以色列撤军。

The United States again turned to the UN when it wanted to limit Iran’s nuclear program to ensure that Iran did not develop nuclear weapons. It won UN support for sanctions against Iran if it did not end its nuclear program, but to win that support it had to reduce its demands, limiting those demands to suspending its nuclear agreement, and not limiting other activities, such as supporting groups that the United States considered terrorist, or developing long-range missiles. Another incident that demonstrates the way the United States interacts with the UN occurred in 2006 when Israel bombed Lebanon in response to Hezbollah’s (a political group within Lebanon) capture of two of its soldiers. Most countries of the world wanted a resolution requiring Israel to stop the bombing and to introduce a ceasefire. The United States did not go along; instead the United States delayed, giving Israel additional time to achieve its military objectives. Eventually, the United States agreed to a limited UN peacekeeping force and an Israeli withdrawal.

战争的遗留问题是毁灭。 © Goran Šafarek/Alamy Stock Photo

The legacy of war is destruction. © Goran Šafarek/Alamy Stock Photo

正如你所见,美国与联合国的关系一直是务实的:当与联合国合作符合美国利益时,美国就会与之合作;当与联合国合作不符合美国利益时,美国就不会与其合作。即使在特朗普总统提出“美国优先”政策之前,当美国认为其切身利益受到挑战时,它仍然保留着单方面采取行动的权利。

As you can see, the US relationship with the UN has been a pragmatic one: When working with the UN will serve US interests, the United States works with it; when it does not serve US interests, it doesn’t. Even before President Trump’s America First policy the United States has retained the right to act unilaterally when it perceives that its vital interests are being challenged.

联合国维和行动多次失败,促使一份联合国报告呼吁建立一支由联合国控制的常备军,以便联合国拥有应对任何冲突局势的“工具”。由于各国不愿将自主权移交给联合国,联合国维和部门的人员规模可能会有所扩大,并实现现代化,但部队很可能仍将由各国“借调”。问题在于控制权。即使联合国获得了部队,它也不具备能够成功指挥行动的高层军事架构。因此,控制权通常落入一个国家手中。而且,如果一个维和国家对维和行动感到不满,它可以简单地召回其部队,就像印度在2000年撤回其在塞拉利昂的部队一样。

The failure of many UN peacekeeping attempts has led to a UN report calling for a permanent UN-controlled army so that the UN will have “the tools” to address any conflict situation. Because countries are reluctant to give up autonomy to the UN, there may be some increase in and modernization of the UN peacekeeping department, but the troops will likely remain “on loan” from individual nations. The problem is one of control. The UN does not have the high level military structure to successfully direct the operations even if it gets the troops. Therefore, control generally falls to one country. And, if a peacekeeping state becomes unhappy with the action, it can simply recall its troops, as India did with its troops in Sierra Leone in 2000.

在思考联合国时,需要牢记的关键一点是,联合国并非超级大国。它无法强迫个人或国家接受其决定,而且往往缺乏将其意志强加于成员国的能力。它所能做的只有实施制裁,这是对不服从的国家施加压力的手段。在实施制裁方面,有两个基本障碍限制了其有效性:(1) 成员国保留其主权;(2) 世界大部分权力集中在少数几个强国手中,除非这些国家一致同意并选择利用联合国作为实现其目标的工具,否则联合国将无法有效运作。

In considering the UN, a key point to remember is that the UN is not a super state. It cannot force individuals or states to accept its decisions, and often it simply lacks the ability to impose its will on the member states. All it can do is impose sanctions, which are methods of exerting pressure on recalcitrant states. In imposing sanctions, two basic handicaps limit its effectiveness: (1) its member states retain their sovereignty, and (2) much of the power of the world is concentrated in a few powerful states, and unless these states concur and choose to use the UN as a vehicle to achieve their ends, the UN will not be effective.

联合国的其他做法

Other UN Approaches

联合国尝试过的其他方法包括:

Some of the other approaches the UN has tried include the following:

  • 为避免秘密条约的阻碍而进行条约登记
  • Registration of treaties in order to avoid obstructive secret treaties
  • 国际法的进一步发展
  • Further development of international law
  • 通过联合国教科文组织的项目促进教育
  • Promotion of education through the programs of UNESCO
  • 鼓励致力于维护和平的区域安排
  • Encouragement of regional arrangements devoted to the preservation of peace
  • 核能的国际管制
  • International control of nuclear energy
  • 管制国家军备,包括导弹和核武器
  • Regulation of national armaments, including missiles and nuclear weapons

将条约送交秘书处登记并公布的做法已根深蒂固,虽然这并不能保证秘密协议的消除,但确实降低了其存在的可能性。国际法委员会一直致力于推动国际法的渐进发展,并取得了缓慢的进展。联合国教科文组织的项目旨在促进基础教育、技术和职业教育、国家间图书交流、学生交流以及许多其他目标,所有这些目标都旨在培养世界各地人民更美好的国际视野。然而,这些推进和平事业的方法必然进展缓慢,其结果也存在不确定性。

The practice of having treaties registered and published by the Secretariat has become firmly established, and although it does not guarantee that secret agreements will be eliminated, it does reduce the chances of their existence. An International Law Commission has tried to promote the progressive development of international law, and it has made headway slowly The programs of UNESCO have aimed at the furtherance of fundamental education, technical and vocational education, the exchange of books between nations, the exchange of students, and many other objectives, all designed to produce a better international outlook on the part of people everywhere. However, these methods for advancing the cause of peace are necessarily slow and their results somewhat uncertain.

1963年,在约翰·F·肯尼迪总统的领导下,国际社会开始努力对核能和国家军备进行管控,并于1968年正式签署《不扩散核武器条约》(NPT)。该条约规定,无核国家放弃研制核弹,以换取其为和平目的核能项目提供援助。拥有核弹的国家被要求削减军备。尽管联合国做出了努力,但仍有约50个国家未能签署该协议。联合国国际原子能机构国际原子能机构(IAEA)对该条约拥有监督权,但其权力和能力有限。因此,2003年,当朝鲜决定研制核弹时,它干脆驱逐了专门负责确保核弹不会发生的联合国观察员。其他国家也试图保留这一选择。

Efforts to establish international control of nuclear energy and national armaments began in 1963 under the direction of President John F. Kennedy, and they were formalized in 1968 with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), which provided for nonnuclear nations to forgo nuclear bomb development in exchange for aid in building peaceful nuclear power programs. Nations with the bomb were ordered to reduce armaments. Despite UN efforts, about fifty nations failed to sign the agreement. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has supervisory power over this treaty but its authority and capabilities are limited. Thus, in 2003, when North Korea decided to develop a nuclear bomb, it simply expelled the UN observers who had been there expressly to ensure this did not happen. Other countries also tried to retain that option.

和平展望

The Outlook for Peace

由于制裁和手段有限,联合国甚至在阻止小规模战争方面也未能取得特别显著的成效,更无力对国际社会中规模最大、实力最强的成员施加压力。即使在处理成员国之间的小规模冲突时,联合国目前也缺乏强制任何一方遵守其政策的机制。因此,在20世纪80年代中期的两伊战争中,联合国多年来一直无法强制执行停火,仅仅是因为相关国家拒绝服从命令。直到1988年,当两国都选择停火时,联合国才得以“强制执行”其政策。联合国的忠实支持者们仍然希望,随着时间的推移,联合国能够发展成为一个能够维护国际法、秩序和正义的组织。随着世界变得越来越小,武器射程和杀伤力不断增强,对这样一个组织的需求也日益迫切。

Given its limited sanctions and tools, the UN has not been especially successful in stopping even small wars, and it certainly has not been capable of coercing the largest and most powerful members of the international community. Even when dealing with small conflicts among member nations, the UN currently has no facility to force anyone to follow its policy. Thus, in the Iran-Iraq War in the mid-1980s, the UN was unable to enforce a ceasefire for years simply because the countries refused to obey the order. Only in 1988, when both countries chose to have a ceasefire, could the UN “enforce” its policy. Loyal supporters of the UN still hope that in time it will develop into an organization capable of maintaining international law, order, and justice. As the world grows smaller and smaller and as the range and deadliness of weapons increase, the need for such an organization becomes ever greater.

新千年伊始,冷战结束,美国开启了在军事和政治上称霸世界的时代。这改变了和平前景的本质。20世纪50年代和60年代弥漫在美国的、与冷战和“共产主义威胁”相关的恐惧已经消散。如今,当时对共产主义威胁的解读似乎已远去。很难相信,在20世纪50年代和60年代初,美国学校会进行防空演习,让学生们练习如何应对俄罗斯的袭击,美国家庭也会建造和储备防空洞。至少对美国而言,此类迫在眉睫的威胁微乎其微,但其他威胁已经取而代之。

The beginning of the new millennium was marked by the end of the Cold War and the beginning of a period of US domination in the world militarily and politically. This changed the nature of the outlook for peace. The fears associated with the Cold War and the “communist threat,” that filled the United States in the 1950s and 1960s are gone. Today, the communist threat, as interpreted then, seems a long way behind us, and it is hard to believe that in the 1950s and early 1960s, US schools conducted air raid drills in which students practiced what to do in case of a Russian attack, and US families built and stocked air raid shelters. For the United States, at least, such imminent threats are minimal, but other threats have replaced them.

美国主导地位的崛起引发了反美情绪,并在世界各地滋生了恐怖主义组织,其目标是损害美国,使其为其“霸凌行径”付出代价。在一些阿拉伯和伊斯兰团体中尤其如此,他们认为美国在巴以冲突中偏袒以色列。“9·11”事件中,五角大楼和世界贸易中心遭到袭击,美国及其盟友在世界各地的机构也遭受恐怖袭击,这些组织的势力可见一斑。为了应对这些威胁,美国发动了一场反恐战争,这场战争持续不断,美国声称有权对恐怖分子发动先发制人的打击。不幸的是,每一次打击都使其他国家更加相信美国的霸凌行径,并导致更多人加入恐怖主义行径,或至少是明里暗里地支持恐怖主义行径。美国应该遵循什么样的力量与理解的正确组合,目前仍存在诸多争议。

The rise of US dominance has provoked an anti-US backlash and the development of terrorist cells throughout the world whose goal is to inflict harm on the United States and make it pay for its “bullying ways.” This is particularly true among some Arab and Islamic groups who feel that the United States has been biased in its support of Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The power of these groups was seen in the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and in the terrorist bombing of the United States and US-ally institutions around the world. To fight such threats, the United States has established a war on terrorism, an ongoing war in which the United States claims the right to attack terrorists with pre-emptive strikes. Unfortunately, each of these strikes convinces others of the United States’ bullying ways and leads more to join the terrorist cause, or at least to implicitly or explicitly support the terrorist cause. What the right mix of strength and understanding is for the United States to follow is still much in debate.

那些被指控支持或窝藏恐怖分子的国家可以采取两种方式来迫使它们屈服:要么屈服并停止对恐怖主义的支持,要么采取可能阻止袭击的政策,例如秘密研发核武器,就像朝鲜(很可能还有伊朗)所做的那样。它们的理由是,这种能力以及使用它的意愿将阻止美国的袭击,并在世界舞台上提升它们的威望。

Those countries that have been accused of supporting or harboring terrorists can be pushed in two ways—they can succumb and stop their support of terrorism, or they can follow policies that may prevent attack, such as surreptitiously developing nuclear weapons, as North Korea, and likely Iran, have done. Their reasoning was that such a capability, and a willingness to use it, would prevent a US attack and give them prestige on the world stage.

讽刺的是,对全球核灾难恐惧的下降反而增加了地区冲突的可能性,以及这些地区冲突演变为核冲突的可能性。原因何在?因为,对任何地区冲突都会导致两个超级大国势不两立、势不两立的担忧减少,使得各国不再理所当然地认为小规模战争会引发大战。然而,仅仅因为对大战的预期降低,并不一定意味着大战的实际概率也会降低,地区冲突实际上可能导致这种势不两立的局面,甚至可能引发第三次世界大战。正如兄弟姐妹之间随时可能爆发争斗一样,原本友好的国家之间也同样可能出现分歧。

Ironically, the decline of fear of a global nuclear disaster has increased the likelihood of regional conflicts and the possibility that those regional conflicts could be nuclear. Why? Because a decreased fear that any regional conflict will pit two superpowers against each other in irreconcilable positions frees nations from automatically expecting a small war to lead to a large war. But simply because the expectation of a large war is reduced, it is not necessarily the case that the actual probability of a large war is reduced, and regional conflicts might, in fact, lead to such irreconcilable positions and the possibility of World War III. Just as fights between siblings can erupt at any time, so too can disagreements among supposedly friendly nations.

例如,1991年苏联解体后,美国和俄罗斯似乎达成了一项协议,双方致力于和平共处。然而,这是一个不稳定的联盟。两国在如何处理乌克兰问题上的分歧导致了军事冲突,因为乌克兰的俄罗斯部分地区试图从乌克兰获得更多自治权。战斗一度激烈,但最终达成了不稳定的停火协议。然而,俄罗斯和美国的关系恶化;美国和欧盟声称俄罗斯援助亲俄武装分子,并对俄罗斯实施经济制裁。作为回应,俄罗斯对美国和欧盟实施了经济制裁。即使在停火之后,制裁仍然有效。

For example, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States and Russia seemed to come to an agreement that both were committed to peaceful coexistence. It has, however, been an uneasy alliance. A dispute between the two about how to deal with Ukraine led to military clashes as Russian portions of Ukraine attempted to gain more autonomy from Ukraine. The fighting was substantial for a while, but ultimately a shaky ceasefire was reached. However, relations between Russia and the United States deteriorated; the United States and the European Union claimed that Russia was aiding the pro-Russian fighters and imposed economic sanctions against Russia. In response, Russia imposed economic sanctions against the United States and the European Union. Both remained in place even after the ceasefire.

2015年和2016年,叙利亚也发生了类似的冲突。当时,美国和俄罗斯都声称正在打击恐怖分子,并都对恐怖分子进行了空袭。但他们对恐怖分子的解读不同。俄罗斯将所有与阿萨德总统作战的人视为恐怖分子,因为他们认为阿萨德是叙利亚的合法领导人。美国只将其中一个组织——伊斯兰国——视为恐怖分子。美国将其他与阿萨德作战的人视为“自由战士”,他们试图合法地从阿萨德手中夺取权力,但美国并不承认阿萨德是叙利亚的合法领导人。从2016年开始,俄罗斯增加了在叙利亚的军事存在,而美国则减少了在叙利亚的军事存在,这导致俄罗斯支持的叙利亚军队巩固了其地位并控制了更多地区。截至2022年,阿萨德总统继续控制叙利亚大部分地区,叛军大部分已投降。

Similar clashes occurred in Syria in 2015 and 2016, where both the United States and Russia claimed to be fighting terrorists, and both conducted bombing raids against the terrorists. But they interpreted terrorists differently. Russia saw all those fighting President Assad as terrorists since they saw him as the legitimate leader of Syria. The United States saw only one of those groups, IS, as terrorists. The United States saw others fighting Assad as “freedom fighters” who were legitimately trying to take over power from Assad, who the United States did not recognize as the legitimate leader of Syria. Starting in 2016, Russia increased its military presence in Syria and the United States decreased its presence, leading Syrian forces, which Russia supported, to improve their positions and take control of more of the country. As of 2022, President Assad continued to control much of Syria and the rebels had for the most part surrendered.

2017年,金正恩加大了核武器及运载火箭的试验力度。特朗普总统对此采取强硬立场,导致了我们在本章开头提到的“火箭人”对话。金正恩回应特朗普时,称特朗普为“精神错乱的美国老糊涂”。(“老糊涂”的意思是老年痴呆症。)在许多人看来,这场口水战比20世纪60年代的古巴导弹危机更让世界距离核战争更近。但随后,正如前文所述,随着两国领导人达成互惠互利协议,金正恩也逐渐收敛好战姿态,核威胁至少暂时消失了。

In 2017, Kim Jong-un increased his testing of nuclear weapons and the rockets by which they could be delivered. President Trump took a hard line on this development, leading to the Rocket Man exchange with which we began the chapter. Kim Jong-un’s response to Trump had Kim calling Trump a “mentally deranged US dotard.” (Dotard means a senile person.) In many people’s eyes this war of words placed the world closer to nuclear war than did the Cuban Missile crisis in the 1960s. But then, as discussed earlier, the threat disappeared, at least temporarily, as the two leaders entered into a reciprocal admiration agreement and Kim Jong-un became less belligerent.

2001年9月11日,世界贸易中心袭击事件

© Alamy

World Trade Center attacks, September 11, 2001.

© Alamy

尽管中美两国在经济和政治上拥有诸多共同利益,但自2022年以来,两国关系已变得紧张。其中一项争端涉及贸易;特朗普总统声称中国未遵守现行贸易协定,对部分中国商品加征关税;中国进行了反击,而美国则威胁进一步加征关税。中国也采取了同样的行动。另一个令人担忧的领域涉及地缘政治,因为中国正在全球扩大其军事和经济影响力。在经济方面,中国于2016年成立了亚洲基础设施开发银行,使其在亚洲经济发展中发挥更大作用。在军事方面,中国声称对东海拥有主权;这将阻止美国军舰进入该海域的大部分区域。中国也发展网络战能力,入侵美国计算机系统(就像美国可能入侵中国的计算机系统一样);并且正在研发能够挑战美国太空控制权的武器。因此,尽管两国目前都致力于和平合作,但这种承诺只是表面功夫,可能很快就会破裂。

Although China and the United States have many shared economic and political interests, as of 2022 relations between the two countries have become strained. One dispute involves trade; President Trump, claiming that China had not followed the trade agreements in place, imposed tariffs on some Chinese goods; China retaliated, and the United States responded by threatening even more tariffs. China did likewise. Another area of concern involves geopolitics as China is extending its influence throughout the world, both militarily and economically. Economically, in 2016, it established the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank that gives it a larger role in Asian economic development. Militarily, it claimed territory on the East China Sea; that would preclude US military ships from large parts of that sea. China is also developing cyber war capabilities and hacking US computers (just as the United States likely hacks Chinas computers); and it is developing weapons that can challenge the US control of space. So while both are currently committed to peaceful cooperation, that commitment is a surface commitment that could break down quickly.

在考量双方的各种论点时,重要的是要认识到“正确”几乎不可避免地是一个灰色地带,每一方往往会采取符合自身政治和经济利益的行动。这意味着我们可以预见,任何拥有权力的政府都会试图将其意志强加于世界。政治箴言是:权力导致腐败,绝对的权力导致绝对的腐败。和平得以实现的唯一途径,是当权者不将大量灰色地带中的“正确”解读为有利于自己的。遗憾的是,历史上很少有如此客观地解读“正确”的例子。相反,历史上充斥着更多“强权即公理”观点的例子。

In considering the various arguments on both sides, it is important to recognize that “right” is almost inevitably a gray area, and each side will often do what is politically and economically in its own interest. This means that we can expect that any government with the power to do so will attempt to impose its will on the world. It is a maxim of politics that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The only way peace will have a chance is if those possessing power do not interpret to their advantage what is “right” in the large number of gray areas. Unfortunately, there have not been many examples of such objective interpretation of what is “right” in history. Instead, history has contained many more examples of the view that “might makes right.”

世界麻烦地区

Trouble Spots of the World

与以往的战争相比,反恐战争对特定地理环境的依赖性有所减弱。恐怖分子可能无处不在——他们可能就住在我们家附近。同样,恐怖主义的破坏力也并非仅限于某个遥远的国家。它可能就在美国本土,正如世贸中心袭击事件所表明的那样。特定地理环境的战争可能会加剧恐怖主义,不幸的是,世界各地存在着许多日益严重的问题,本节我们将探讨其中的一些。我们先从非洲开始。

The war on terrorism has less of a specific geographic component than did previous wars. Terrorists could be anywhere—they could be living right next door. Similarly, the damage from terrorism is not limited to some far-off country. It could be right here in the United States, as was made clear with the World Trade Center attack. Terrorism is likely to be exacerbated by geographically specific fights, and unfortunately, around the world there are a number of festering problems, and in this section, we shall review some of them. Let’s start with Africa.

非洲的稳定二战后,许多非洲国家摆脱了欧洲殖民者的统治,赢得了独立。但独立也伴随着血腥的内乱、政变以及与邻国的边界争端。这些国家中很少有民主政府所需的社会基础设施,因此政府普遍实行独裁统治,而争斗的焦点在于由哪种独裁统治以及哪种类型的独裁统治。

African Stability During the post-World War II period, many African countries won their independence from European colonial nations, but that independence has been marked by bloody internal strife, coups d’état, and disputes over borders with neighboring countries. Few of the countries have the underlying social infrastructure necessary for a democratic government, so the governments have generally been autocracies, and the fights have been over which and what type of autocracy will rule.

许多非洲国家存在严重的种族分裂。部分原因是历史上强加的边界将相互竞争的族群联系在一起,21世纪初,内战和冲突可能会持续不断。例如,索马里,相互竞争的族群之间的战斗导致了饥荒和内战;卢旺达,图西族和埃卢图族之间的战斗撕裂了该国的社会结构;苏丹和南苏丹于2011年分离,最终陷入武装冲突。另一个例子是津巴布韦,直到2018年,罗伯特·穆加贝政府一直通过对反对派领导人使用恐吓和暴力来维持权力。尽管取代穆加贝的政府承诺更加尊重人权,但2020年,抗议活动遭到暴力镇压,给该国蒙上了一层阴影。尼日利亚局势稳定,但恐怖组织博科圣地仍然是一股强大的破坏力量。

Many African nations have strong ethnic divisions. In part because of the historically imposed boundaries that combine competing ethnic groups, there will likely be continuing internal wars and fights throughout the 2000s. Examples include Somalia, where fighting between competing groups has led to famine and civil war; Rwanda, where fighting between the Tutsis and Elutus has torn the country’s social fabric apart; the Sudan and South Sudan, which separated in 2011, only to end up in armed conflict. Yet another example is Zimbabwe, where, until 2018, the government of Robert Mugabe clung to power through the use of intimidation and violence towards opposition leaders. Although the government that replaced Mugabe pledged to have a greater respect for human rights, 2020 was marred by protests that were violently put down. Nigeria has been stable, but a terrorist group, Boko Haram, remains a powerful disruptive force.

拉丁美洲的稳定接下来我们来看看拉丁美洲。如今,拉丁美洲已不再像以前那样动荡不安,成为两个超级大国之间代理人战争的战场。但该地区依然动荡不安,一些黑帮向企业勒索保护费,恐吓挑战其权力的公民,并控制着一些中美洲和南美洲国家的大片地区。正是这些动荡导致大批移民离开他们的国家,试图移民到美国。

Latin American Stability Let’s next turn to Latin America. Latin America is no longer as troubled a region as it was when it was a location for a proxy war between the competing superpowers. But it is still troubled, with gangs extorting protection money from businesses and terrorizing citizens who challenge their power, and controlling larges areas in a number of central and South American countries. It was that trouble that led to caravans of migrants leaving their countries and trying to emigrate into the United States.

超级大国之间的竞争引发了诸多问题,例如20世纪80年代初,美国和前苏联为争夺霸权而导致尼加拉瓜和萨尔瓦多爆发的血腥内战。这些问题虽然已经结束,但一些重大问题依然存在。

An example of the problems caused by that competition between superpowers was the bloody civil wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the early 1980s as both the United States and the former Soviet Union jockeyed for position. Those problems have ended, but significant problems remain.

其中一些问题仅仅是早期冲突遗留下来的对抗。另一些问题则源于各国内部收入差距巨大、许多国家民主传统薄弱以及势力强大的贩毒集团。委内瑞拉的民主制度已被查韦斯总统和马杜罗总统彻底瓦解。这导致了政治冲突,也使人们对政府能否响应民意失去了信心。这也导致美国对委内瑞拉实施经济制裁。所有这些因素加在一起,导致了委内瑞拉严重的经济衰退和秩序的崩溃。在许多国家,贩毒集团和帮派往往为所欲为;他们就是法律,而不是政府。即使是拉丁美洲最稳定的国家之一墨西哥,也发现自己正在努力控制毒品市场。贩毒集团。数以千计的无辜平民被卷入交火,在各个贩毒集团之间或政府与贩毒集团之间的战斗中丧生。

Some of these problems are simply leftover antagonisms from the earlier conflicts. Others result from the large disparities in income within countries, the weak democratic traditions in many of them, and the powerful drug cartels. Venezuela’s democracy had been essentially dismantled by Presidents Chavez and Maduro. This led to political strife and a breakdown of peoples faith in government being responsive to the will of the people. It also led to economic sanctions being imposed on Venezuela by the United States. Combined this led to a severe economic depression in Venezuela and a breakdown of order. In many countries drug cartels and gangs often operate at will; they are the law, not the government. Even Mexico, one of the most stable Latin American countries, finds itself fighting to get control over the drug cartels. Thousands of innocent civilians have been caught in the crossfire, killed in fights either between various cartels or between the government and the cartels.

一些潜在的亚洲麻烦地区:印度巴基斯坦边境;朝鲜和韩国边境;中印边境和中国西藏地区;南海。

Some potential Asian trouble spots: India Pakistan border; North-South Korea border; Chinese-Indian border and Tibetan region of China; South China Sea.

前苏联加盟共和国和东欧的稳定近年来,俄罗斯和乌克兰就如何治理与俄罗斯文化相关的东乌克兰问题一直存在争议,俄罗斯支持与乌克兰政府作战的武装团体。2014 年,俄罗斯吞并了曾属于乌克兰的克里米亚,表面上是为了保护那里的俄语使用者。美国和欧盟对此表示反对,并向乌克兰提供了一些经济支持;他们还对俄罗斯实施了经济制裁,而俄罗斯则以对西方公司实施经济制裁作为回应。2022 年,这些紧张局势导致俄罗斯入侵乌克兰,因为俄罗斯试图重新获得对该地区的历史控制权。

Stability in the Former Soviet Republics and Eastern Europe In recent years Russia and Ukraine have been in dispute over how Eastern Ukraine, which is culturally connected to Russia, should be governed, with Russia supporting armed groups who are fighting the Ukrainian government. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, which had been part of Ukraine, ostensibly to protect Russian speakers there. The United States and the European Union objected, and provided some financial support for Ukraine; they also imposed economic sanctions on Russia, which responded with economic sanctions against Western companies. In 2022, those tensions led to a Russian invasion of Ukraine as Russia attempted to regain its historical control over the region.

远东和印度支那的稳定2022年,朝鲜仍然令人担忧,因为它已经研制出核弹和可将其发射至世界各地的导弹。美国曾表示朝鲜不应拥有核武器,2017年,特朗普总统与朝鲜领导人金正恩之间爆发了一场推特战。正如我之前所讨论的,2018年,这种关系暂时缓和,但随着金正恩最终拒绝放弃朝鲜核计划,紧张局势很快再次加剧。

Stability in the Far East and Indochina In 2022, North Korea was still of concern because it has developed a nuclear bomb and missiles that can send them throughout the world. The United States stated that North Korea should not have nuclear weapons, and in 2017 there was a war of tweets between President Trump and the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. As I discussed earlier, in 2018 that gave way to a temporary love fest, but soon returned to heightened tension when Kim Jong-un ultimately refused to dismantle the country’s nuclear program.

即使朝鲜问题得到解决,随着中国发展成为足以挑战美国的世界经济和军事强国,远东地区仍可能面临巨大的动荡,从而形成“修昔底德陷阱”。如前所述,中国声称控制着南海90%的海域,这片海域远远超出了其海岸线,其中包括其他远东国家声称拥有主权的地区。为了强化对南海的主权,中国占领了环礁(环状珊瑚礁或一系列在海洋中形成浅泻湖的小岛),并在这些岛屿上建造军事基地。美国对此表示反对,但并未采取任何措施阻止。中美关系仍然是一个棘手问题。

Even if the North Korean problem is resolved, the Far East will likely experience significant potential for instability, with the growth of China into a world economic and military power that can challenge the United States, creating the Thucydides Trap. As mentioned earlier, China is claiming control over 90 percent of the South China Sea, an area that extends far beyond its coastline, and which includes areas that other Far East countries claim as their own. To strengthen its claims to the sea, it has taken over atolls (rings of coral reef or a series of islets creating shallow lagoons in the ocean), and is building islands out of them and then placing military bases on them. The United States has objected but has not done anything to stop them. China-US relations remain a trouble spot.

中东紧张局势过去四十年来,中东一直是世界紧张和不稳定的根源,至今仍是一个严重的动乱地区。中东地区实际上存在两个相互关联的问题:阿拉伯国家内部的治理问题以及阿拉伯国家与以色列之间的紧张关系。中东的治理难题与大多数由殖民地而非独立自主建立的国家一样,中东地区在建立代表民意的国家方面一直举步维艰。大多数中东国家都由来自同一部落的独裁者统治,他们并非通过民主手段,而是通过压迫和恐惧来维持统治。这些独裁者也常常腐败。对于这些国家的许多企业来说,为了获得经营许可,你必须行贿并按照政府的要求行事。这就是经商的成本。

Tension in the Middle East The Middle East has been a source of tension and instability in the world for the last forty years, and it remains a serious trouble spot. There are actually two related problems there: governing problems within the Arab states and tensions between Arab states and Israel. Governing Problems in the Middle East Like most former colonial areas in which a country has been created by colonies, rather than emerging on its own, the Middle East has had a difficult time creating a state that represents the will of the people. Instead, most Middle Eastern countries have been ruled by autocrats who have come from one tribe in the region and who have maintained control, not through democratic means, but rather through oppression and fear. These autocrats also often have become corrupt. For many businesses in these countries, in order to get a permit to do anything, you have to pay bribes and do what the government wants. It is the cost of doing business.

中东及周边国家。

The Middle East and surrounding countries.

这种局面让美国及其盟友面临艰难抉择。独裁政权往往愿意支持违背民众意愿的美国政策,从而获得美国的支持和援助,即便这些政权不允许自由选举,并且实行高压政策。这些领导人被视为美国的坚定盟友,这导致民众对他们反感,民众强烈反对美国支持以色列的政策。埃及的穆巴拉克就是一个例子。在美国政府的大力支持下,他统治埃及三十多年。尽管穆斯林兄弟会拥有大量民众的支持,但美国对埃及缺乏自由选举及其法律制裁视而不见,并阻止该党参选。

This situation has led to difficult choices for the United States and its allies. Often, the authoritarian regimes have been willing to support US policies contrary to the will of their population, which has led to their getting US support and aid, even though they did not allow free elections and were repressive. The leaders have been seen as strong friends of the United States, causing them to be disliked by the population, which strongly opposes US policy in support of Israel. Hosni Mubarak in .Egypt is an example. He ruled Egypt for more than thirty years with strong US government support. The United States turned a blind eye to the lack of free elections and his legal sanctions preventing the Muslim Brotherhood from running for office, even though that party had significant support in the population.

这些矛盾在后来被称为“阿拉伯之春”的事件中达到了顶峰——2011年,突尼斯、利比亚、埃及、也门和叙利亚爆发民众起义,其他中东国家也爆发了规模较小的起义。起因是一起事件。2010年12月17日,一名突尼斯街头小贩自焚,以抗议一名市政官员及其助手对他的骚扰和羞辱。他们没收了他的蔬菜车,因为他无证经营,被迫向政府官员行贿。这一抗议行为在社交媒体上被广泛传播,引起了中东地区所有厌倦腐败政府的民众的共鸣。反对突尼斯政府的示威活动不断升级,并蔓延至整个中东地区,导致突尼斯领导人辞职,埃及领导人被推翻和逮捕,利比亚和叙利亚内战爆发。

The contradictions came to a head in what has become known as the Arab Spring—the 2011 uprisings of the population in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Yemen, and Syria, with smaller uprisings in other Middle Eastern countries. What set it off was a single incident. A Tunisian street vendor set himself on fire on December 17,2010, as a protest against the harassment and humiliation that he felt had been inflicted on him by a municipal official and her aides. They had confiscated his vegetable cart for conducting business without a license, which required him to pay bribes to the government officials. Shared widely on social media, the act of protest struck a chord with people all over the Middle East who were sick of their corrupt governments. Demonstrations against the Tunisian government grew and then spread across the Middle East, causing the Tunisian leader to resign, the Egyptian leader to be overthrown and arrested, and civil wars in Libya and Syria to erupt.

美国支持人民所要求的自由,但它也支持过许多前任领导人,因此它发现自己处境艰难——究竟是支持领导人还是抗议者。不幸的是,抗议活动后组建的新政府在许多情况下都无力治理,失去了人民的支持。以埃及为例。阿拉伯之春起义后,最初,美国反对的穆斯林兄弟会候选人赢得了选举。然而,他很快失去了人民的支持,最终爆发了一场政变,武装部队首脑阿卜杜勒·法塔赫·塞西成为总统。他的统治日益专制;他取缔了穆兄会,并逮捕了所有看似有机会在选举中击败他的候选人。本质上,他创建了一个几乎与“阿拉伯之春”之前一模一样的威权政府。

The United States supported the freedom the people were demanding, but it also had supported many of the previous leaders, so it found itself in a difficult position—whether to support the leaders or the protesters. Unfortunately, the new governments that formed after the protests were in many cases unable to govern, and they lost the support of the people. Consider, for example, Egypt. Initially, after the Arab Spring uprising, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate, whom the United States opposed, won the election. However, he quickly lost the support of the people, and there was essentially a coup d’état and the head of the armed forces, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi became president. His rule became increasingly authoritarian; he outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, and arrested any candidate who seemed as if he had a chance of beating him in an election. Essentially he created an authoritarian government almost identical to the one that existed before the Arab Spring.

一个棘手的问题是,这些地区青年失业率往往高达40%甚至更高,而新政府并没有比​​旧政府更好地为民众提供符合其期望工资的就业机会。事实上,旧政权垮台带来的战乱和不确定性很可能加剧了这些问题。将这一经济现实与部落和宗教冲突造成的紧张局势结合起来,我们就能理解这些国​​家目前所处的困境。

One intractable problem is that unemployment in the regions among the youth is often 40 percent or higher, and the new governments have no better ways of providing jobs for people at the wages they want than did the older governments. In fact, the fighting and uncertainty associated with the fall of the old regimes have likely made the problems worse. When one combines that economic reality with the tension caused by tribal and religious rivalries, one can understand the difficult times the countries are having.

这些国家将分为两类:一类是拥有足够石油收入的国家,这些收入足以为其公民提供重要的物质产品,例如科威特和沙特阿拉伯;另一类是没有此类收入的国家,例如埃及和也门。拥有足够收入的国家可以利用这些收入维持国内相对平静。而没有收入的国家要么不得不诉诸高压独裁统治,要么陷入危机。例如,埃及在尝试民主后,通过恢复军事控制来应对这一问题。也门则陷入内战,与沙特阿拉伯结盟的势力与与伊朗结盟的势力交战。

The countries will fall into two groups— hose that have sufficient oil income they can use to provide their citizens with significant material goods, such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia— and others without such income, such as Egypt and Yemen. Those with sufficient income can use it to maintain relative calm within the country. Those without it either have to resort to repressive authoritarian rule or they fall into crisis. For example, Egypt dealt with the problem by reverting to military control after an attempt at democracy. Yemen fell into a civil war with groups aligned with Saudi Arabia fighting groups aligned with Iran.

即使是那些有收入来安抚国民的国家也面临问题。沙特阿拉伯、土耳其和伊朗争夺中东的领导权,导致各派系之间爆发激烈的代理人战争。沙特阿拉伯与也门的战争旨在限制伊朗在该地区的影响力,而伊朗对叙利亚的支持则旨在增强其影响力。

Even countries that had income to placate their citizens faced problems. Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Iran jockeyed for leadership of the Middle East, leading to contentious proxy wars between the various factions. Saudi Arabia’s war with Yemen was intended to limit Iranian influence in the region, and Iran’s support of Syria was designed to increase its influence.

中东政治因伊斯兰不同教派之间的内部紧张关系而更加复杂。例如,伊朗由什叶派统治,而沙特阿拉伯以及其他中东国家则由逊尼派统治,尽管其大部分人口是什叶派。这意味着沙特阿拉伯担心伊朗在该地区获得过大的影响力,因为这可能会助长其什叶派少数派的反抗。

Middle Eastern politics are further complicated by internal tensions among different sects of Islam. For example, Iran is ruled by Shiites, while Saudi Arabia, as well as other Middle Eastern countries, is ruled by Sunnis, even though much of its population is Shiite. This means that Saudi Arabia is concerned about Iran gaining too much influence in the region, because it might empower its Shiite minority to revolt.

显然,中东的政治局势错综复杂,我们甚至还没有讨论逊尼派和什叶派的众多不同教派,这些教派往往有着截然不同的议程。许多议程从未被明确表态,甚至常常与既定立场相悖,这意味着任何官员的言论往往都具有双重甚至三重含义,需要谨慎解读。中东的“外交智慧”是外交智慧的高度微妙化版本。它更像是下围棋,而不是下象棋。

Clearly, politics in the Middle East is complicated, and we have not even discussed the many different Sunni and Shiite sects, which often have quite different agendas. Many of these agendas are never directly stated, and often are even contrary to stated positions, which means that the statements any official makes often have double or triple meanings and need to be interpreted with care. Middle East “diplomatic smarts” is a highly nuanced version of diplomatic smarts. It is more like playing Go than playing Chess.

巴以紧张局势上述问题对任何地区来说都已足够,而与以色列的紧张关系则使这些问题更加严重。几乎自人类历史伊始,中东地区就一直是战乱频仍的地区。该地区的国家,如利比亚、叙利亚、伊拉克、以色列和伊朗,都曾周期性地受到来自不同国家统治者的影响。第一次世界大战期间,该地区被法国和英国军队占领。1922 年至 1939 年间,巴勒斯坦(现以色列)的犹太人口从 84,000 人增加到 445,000 人。他们购买和占领的土地此前为外地地主所有,而先前租用这片土地的流离失所的阿拉伯人仍然对新定居者怀有敌意。这片土地成为了争议领土。

Palestinian-Israeli Tensions The problems just outlined would be more than enough for any region, but they are exacerbated by tensions with Israel. Practically since the beginning of history, the Middle East has been a virtual hotbed of warring peoples. The countries of the area, such as Libya, Syria, Iraq, Israel, and Iran, have periodically fallen under the influence of rulers from many different nations. During World War I, the area was occupied by French and British troops, and between 1922 and 1939 the Jewish population in Palestine (now Israel) rose from 84,000 to 445,000. The land they bought and occupied had been previously owned by absentee landlords, and the displaced Arabs who had previously rented the land remained hostile to the new settlers. The land became disputed territory.

随着犹太人口的增长,犹太复国主义的观点也日益增长。犹太复国主义者是指支持建立和扩张犹太家园的个人。二战期间,犹太复国主义势力与盟军并肩作战,但不断提醒盟军,他们的核心目标是寻求犹太民族的独立。提议建立犹太民族的地区当时是英国的保护国。1942年,英国通过了《比尔特莫尔计划》,该计划呼吁采取初步措施,确保巴勒斯坦的犹太人安全。该计划规定,犹太人可以不受限制地移民巴勒斯坦,并最终建立一个犹太联邦。

As the Jewish population increased, so did Zionist views. A Zionist is an individual who supports the establishment and expansion of a Jewish homeland. During World War II, Zionist forces fought on the side of the Allies, but continually reminded the Allied forces that their own central motive was to seek independence for a Jewish nation. The area in which the nation was proposed was a British protectorate, and in 1942 Britain passed the Biltmore Program, which called for the first steps to be taken to secure Palestine for the Jews. It provided for unrestricted Jewish immigration into Palestine and eventual establishment of a Jewish commonwealth.

与此同时,巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人并未对犹太复国主义者发起统一抵抗。因此,二战结束时,巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人只能向阿拉伯国家联盟(埃及、叙利亚、黎巴嫩、外约旦、伊拉克、沙特阿拉伯和也门)求助。他们反对比尔特莫尔计划。英国对如何处理局势犹豫不决,主张在巴勒斯坦建立一个双民族国家,并拒绝接纳约10万欧洲犹太难民进入该地区。又一次暴力冲突导致联合国介入。1947年9月1日,联合国调查委员会呼吁将该领土划分为两个国家——一个阿拉伯国家和一个犹太国家。

Palestinian Arabs, meanwhile, did not put up a united resistance to the Zionists. Therefore, at the end of World War II, the Palestinian Arabs had only the League of Arab States (Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen) to turn to. They voiced opposition to the Biltmore Program. Britain, undecided about how the situation should be handled, called for the establishment of a binational state in Palestine, and refused to admit some 100,000 European Jewish refugees to the area. Another outbreak of violence caused the UN to intervene. On September 1, 1947, the UN commission of inquiry called for the division of the territory into two states—one Arab and one Jewish.

在联合国建立的两个“国家”中占多数的阿拉伯人拒绝了这一命令,巴勒斯坦战争由此爆发。组织严密的犹太复国主义力量战胜了到 1948 年 5 月,他们不仅控制了巴勒斯坦的犹太人份额,还控制了阿拉伯人的份额。1948 年 5 月 14 日,以色列国宣告成立。从那时起,以色列和周边的阿拉伯邻国之间就一直发生冲突。第一次爆发暴力事件是 1956 年的苏伊士危机,当时以色列在西奈地区对埃及发动了突然袭击。1967 年,紧张局势再次爆发战争,在所谓的六日战争中,以色列从埃及和约旦夺取了大片领土。以色列以国家安全为由继续占领在战争中赢得的领土。1973 年,阿拉伯军队袭击以色列,试图夺回他们的土地,零星的战斗一直持续到 1974 年中期双方同意停火。

Hie Arabs, who constituted a majority in both the ‘states” the UN had created, refused the order and thus the Palestinian War began. Tire well-organized Zionist forces overcame the Arabs, and by May 1948 they had obtained control not only of the Jewish share of Palestine but the Arab share as well. On May 14, 1948, the state of Israel was proclaimed. Since that time there has been continual strife between Israel and its surrounding Arab neighbors. The first outbreak of violence was the Suez Crises in 1956, when Israel staged a surprise attack on Egypt in the Sinai area. In 1967, the tensions broke into war again, and in what is called the Six-Day War, Israel made large territorial gains, taking land from Egypt and Jordan. Israel continued to occupy the territory it won in the war, citing the need for national security. In 1973, Arab forces attacked Israel in an attempt to regain their land, and sporadic fighting continued until mid-1974 when both sides agreed to a ceasefire.

1967年,联合国安理会通过了后来被称为第242号决议的决议,要求以色列归还战争期间占领的土地和财产。1974年,联合国大会承认巴勒斯坦解放组织(巴解组织),赋予其联合国永久观察员地位。以色列拒绝承认,理由是出于安全原因,并认为它不能将土地归还给一个致力于消灭以色列的组织。作为回应,以色列开始在被占领土上建立犹太人定居点。

In 1967, the UN Security Council passed what has come to be known as Resolution 242, which called for the return of land and property taken by Israel during the wars. In 1974 the UN General Assembly recognized the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), giving it permanent observer status at the UN. Israel rejected this, citing security reasons and arguing that it could not give land back to a group committed to the annihilation of Israel. In response, Israel began to establish Jewish settlements in the occupied land.

1979年,埃及和以色列达成和平条约,要求以色列撤出西奈半岛,这给双方带来了一些和解的希望,但更为棘手的巴勒斯坦问题却被回避。最终,这一问题引发了持续不断的战火,以色列于1982年入侵黎巴嫩,试图消灭巴解组织。由于以色列、巴解组织和叙利亚在该地区争夺政治权力,黎巴嫩首都贝鲁特的大部分地区沦为废墟。在黎巴嫩,众多内部势力因激烈的宗教、政治和经济竞争而分化,彼此之间争斗不休。与此同时,叙利亚和以色列等外部利益集团则试图在该国推行各自版本的秩序。20世纪90年代初,一个由叙利亚支持的派系掌权,黎巴嫩的长期磨难似乎终于要结束了。然而,不幸的是,这只是暂时的。戈兰高地曾是叙利亚的一部分,但于 1981 年被以色列吞并,并有以色列公民在此定居,但该地仍然存在争议。

Some hope of accord existed in 1979, as Egypt and Israel agreed to a peace treaty calling for Israel’s withdrawal from the Sinai Peninsula, but the more difficult Palestinian question was skirted. That question eventually led to continued fighting and war as Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 in an attempt to eliminate the PLO. As a result of this fighting, much of Beirut, the capital of Lebanon, fell into ruins as Israel, the PLO, and Syria struggled for political power in the area. In Lebanon, the many internal groups are differentiated by intense religious, political, and economic rivalries, and they fight bitterly with each other, while, at the same time, outside interests, such as those of Syria and Israel, attempt to enforce their own versions of order on the country. In the early 1990s, a Syrian-backed faction took control, and it looked as though the long ordeal in Lebanon was finally coming to an end. Unfortunately, it was only temporary. The Golan Heights, which was once part of Syria but was annexed by Israel in 1981 and settled by Israeli citizens, remained in dispute.

1993年8月,以色列总理伊扎克·拉宾与巴解组织主席亚西尔·阿拉法特签署了一项历史性的和平协议,结束了近五十年来持续不断的动乱与冲突。以色列同意将约旦河西岸和加沙地带的部分地区移交给巴勒斯坦阿拉伯人,由他们作为自治区进行管理。最终解决冲突的谈判仍在继续,双方爆发了激烈的争斗和不满。

In August 1993, the Israeli Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin, and the chairman of the PLO, Yasser Arafat, signed a historic peace accord to bring to a conclusion almost five decades of incessant turmoil and conflict. Israel agreed to turn over specific regions of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Arabs, who would administer them as autonomous divisions. The negotiations leading toward final settlement continued with enormous fights and complaints on

巴勒斯坦示威者在巴勒斯坦领土西岸的冲突中向以色列士兵投掷石块。

© Shutterstock

Palestinian demonstrators throw stones at Israeli soldiers during a clash in the West Bank of the Palestinian territory.

© Shutterstock

双方都存在冲突。这些争斗和怨言持续了整个20世纪90年代和21世纪初。2003年,为了报复自杀式爆炸事件,以色列派遣军队占领了约旦河西岸和加沙地带的大部分地区,摧毁并围攻了巴解组织总部以及恐怖分子嫌疑人及其亲属的住所。美国和其他西方国家敦促双方遵循“和平路线图”,该路线图要求巴勒斯坦和以色列同步走向和平,巴勒斯坦警察部队应阻止巴勒斯坦武装分子袭击以色列人,以色列军队应撤出巴勒斯坦并停止定居点建设。虽然很少有人相信“路线图”会奏效,但所有人都认为最好还是尝试一下。

both sides. Those fights and complaints continued through the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2003, in retaliation for suicide bombings, Israel sent in its army and occupied much of the West Bank and Gaza, destroying and laying siege to PLO headquarters and houses of suspected terrorists and their relatives. The United States and other Western countries urged both sides to follow a Roadmap to Peace, which required both Palestinians and Israelis to move simultaneously toward peace, with the Palestinian police force stopping the militant Palestinians from attacking Israelis and the Israeli forces withdrawing from Palestine and stopping settlements. Few believed that the Roadmap would work, but all believed that it was best to try.

2006年,以色列单方面从部分巴勒斯坦领土撤军,吞并了以色列在此前战争中占领的其他巴勒斯坦领土,并开始修建隔离墙,将巴勒斯坦人与被吞并的领土隔离开来。阿拉法特的继任者法塔赫与以色列签署了和平条约,但在选举中败给了哈马斯。哈马斯不接受以色列的存在,而且更加激进。哈马斯发誓永不接受以色列的生存权,这导致以色列中断和平谈判,并开始暗杀哈马斯领导人。这导致了进一步的暴力冲突,2006年,黎巴嫩武装组织真主党参战。以色列袭击了黎巴嫩和巴勒斯坦领土,声称黎巴嫩政府未能遏制真主党。以色列的轰炸造成数千名黎巴嫩平民死亡,真主党也向以色列发射了数千枚导弹。由于双方都变得越来越激进,温和派被夹在中间。

In 2006, Israel conducted a unilateral withdrawal from part of the Palestinian territory, annexed other parts of the Palestinian territory that Israel had occupied in previous wars, and began building a wall separating Palestinians from the annexed territories. Arafat’s successor party, Fatah, signed a peace treaty with Israel, and then lost an election to Hamas, which did not accept the existence of Israel and was far more militant. Hamas vowed never to accept Israel’s right to exist, leading Israel to break off peace negotiations and to begin a policy of assassinating Hamas leaders. That led to further violence, and in 2006, Hezbollah, a militant group in Lebanon, entered the fight. Israel attacked Lebanon as well as the Palestinian territory, arguing that the Lebanese government had not contained Hezbollah. Israeli bombing raids killed thousands of Lebanese civilians, and Hezbollah indiscriminately launched thousands of missiles at Israel. Moderates were caught in the middle, as both sides became more and more radicalized.

2009年,奥巴马总统与阿拉伯和巴勒斯坦社区接触,并表示反对以色列在巴勒斯坦被占领土上扩张定居点。这一直是美国的既定政策,但此前美国对此视而不见,并未对以色列屡次违反定居点的行为施加任何惩罚。唐纳德·特朗普在2016年赢得总统大选后,这一政策发生了改变。随着特朗普当选,美国的政策变得更加包容定居点和以色列。美国威胁停止向巴勒斯坦人提供经济援助,并承认耶路撒冷为以色列首都,尽管巴勒斯坦人也声称耶路撒冷是他们的首都。巴勒斯坦人强烈反对,但无能为力。拜登总统在2020年获胜,美国回归了传统的政策:在声明上反对以色列定居点,但在实践上却接受它们。这段漫长历史的后果是一片混乱。叙利亚饱受内战蹂躏;黎巴嫩失去了一个有效的政府,巴勒斯坦和以色列距离和平依然遥不可及。

In 2009, President Obama reached out to the Arab and Palestinian communities and stated that he opposed expansions of Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. This had always been US stated policy, but earlier the United States had looked the other way and not imposed any penalties on Israel for its repeated violations. That policy changed when Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016. With Trump’s election US policy became much more accepting of settlements, and of Israel. The United States threatened to stop providing financial aid for Palestinians, and recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, even though the Palestinians also claimed it as their capital. The Palestinians strenuously objected but there was little they could do. President Biden’s victory in 2020 was accompanied with a return to the traditional US policy objecting to the Israeli settlements in statements, but accepting them in practice. The result of this long history is a mess. Syria has been ravaged by civil war; Lebanon has lost any effective government, and Palestinians and Israelis are as far from peace as ever.

结论

Conclusion

总而言之,国际政治远非一成不变。冲突通常没有正式的解决方案,但尽管如此,冲突最终会随着时间的推移而逐渐消退,因为双方都意识到与其直接面对冲突,不如让冲突自然消退。然而,冲突升级为军事冲突的威胁始终存在。社会科学家无法解答这些冲突。但他们希望,通过反思,各方能够认识到和睦相处以及合理妥协的优势。正如教皇利奥十三世在本章开篇题词中所说:“没有什么比以战争对抗战争更重要。”

In summary, international politics is anything but settled and clear. Often there is no formal resolution to a conflict, but despite this, the conflict will fade away with time, as both sides realize that they are better off letting the conflict fade away rather than face it directly. But the threat of a conflict escalating into a military fight is always present. Social scientists have no answers from these conflicts. But what social scientists hope is that by considering them in a reflective way the various sides can see the advantages of getting along, and of reasonable compromise. As Pope Leo XIII put it in the opening epigraph to this chapter, “nothing is more important than the war on war.”

学习与回顾

Study and Review

要点

Key Points

  • 如果国家没有得到他们想要的东西,而他们又有能力得到它,他们往往会发动战争来获得它。
  • If countries do not get what they want, and they have the power to do so, they often go to war to get it.
  • 国际法是一个好主意,但它缺乏任何方法来执行其决定。
  • International law is a good idea, but it lacks any way of enforcing its decisions.
  • 联合国的三个主要机构是大会、安全理事会和秘书处。
  • Three principal organs of the UN are the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Secretariat.
  • 美国没有向联合国教科文组织缴纳会费,原因就如同比利如果不喜欢比赛的进程就会把球拿走一样。
  • The United States did not pay its dues for UNESCO for the same reason that Billy takes his ball away if he doesn’t like the way the game is going.
  • 新的世界秩序将由主要大国共同决定,主要是美国。美国的先发制人政策使其成为世界是非对错的最终裁决者。
  • The new world order is to be determined collectively by the major powers, primarily the United States. The US policy of pre-emption made it the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong in the world.
  • 中国的崛起直接挑战美国的霸权。
  • The rise of China directly challenges US hegemony.
  • 阿以冲突涉及多个层面,如同癌症扩散一样影响着该地区。
  • The Arab-Israeli conflict has many dimensions and affects the area like a cancer that has metastasized.

一些重要术语

Some Important Terms

  • 基地组织 (406)
  • Al-Qaeda (406)
  • 阿拉伯之春 (407)
  • Arab Spring (407)
  • 大会 (412)
  • General Assembly (412)
  • 国际法(410)
  • international law (410)
  • 调解(409)
  • mediation (409)
  • 先发制人政策(406)
  • policy of pre-emption (406)
  • 第242(423)号决议
  • Resolution 242 (423)
  • 制裁(414)
  • sanctions (414)
  • 秘书处 (412)
  • Secretariat (412)
  • 安全理事会(412)
  • Security Council (412)
  • 修昔底德陷阱(409)
  • Thucydides Trap (409)
  • 联合国(UN) (410)
  • United Nations (UN) (410)
  • 否决(412)
  • veto (412)
  • 犹太复国主义者 (422)
  • Zionist (422)

复习和讨论的问题

Questions for Review and Discussion

一般问题

General Questions

  1. 您如何解释人类历史上战争的普遍性?
  2. How do you explain the prevalence of wars throughout human history?
  3. 冷战结束后,战争威胁就消失了吗?请解释一下你的立场。
  4. Is the threat of war over with the end of the Cold War? Explain your position.
  5. 特朗普总统对巴以冲突的态度如何影响该地区的和平前景?
  6. How did President Trumps approach to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict impact prospects for peace in the region?
  7. 解释战争“仅仅是政治通过其他手段的延续”这一说法。
  8. Explain the statement that war is “merely a continuation of politics by other means.”
  9. 解释如何利用外交手段来防止战争。
  10. Explain how diplomacy is used to prevent war.
  11. 国际政府无法阻止所有战争的原因有哪些?
  12. What are some of the reasons that international government cannot prevent all wars?
  13. 联合国通过哪三个最重要的机构来开展工作?
  14. What are the three most important organs through which the UN acts?
  15. 联合国大会和联合国安全理事会有什么区别?
  16. What is the difference between the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council?
  17. 安理会的否决权如何阻碍寻求和平?否决权是否有助于寻求和平?
  18. How does the veto power of the Security Council hinder the search for peace? Are there anyways the veto power helps the search for peace?
  19. 讨论联合国的一些成就。
  20. Discuss some of the accomplishments of the UN.
  21. 当今世界最严重的问题有哪些?你能想出解决这些问题的办法吗?
  22. What are some of the worst trouble spots in the world today? Can you think of ways to deal with any of these problems?
  23. 简要介绍阿以冲突的历史。
  24. Give a brief history of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
  25. 新世界秩序意味着什么?在新秩序下,世界更加稳定还是更加不稳定?
  26. What is meant by the new world order? Was there more or less stability in the world under this order?
  27. 世界面临的最重大问题是什么?
  28. What is the most significant problem the world faces?
  29. 我们如何知道反恐战争是否正义?
  30. How would we know if the war on terrorism is justified?
  31. 如果墨西哥制定先发制人的政策,美国可能会如何应对?
  32. If Mexico established a policy of pre-emption, how would the United States likely respond?
  33. 如果现在花在武器系统上的钱可以用于其他用途,您认为这些钱应该花在什么地方?
  34. If the amount of money now spent on weapons systems could be used for something else, what do you think the money should be spent on?

互联网问题

Internet Questions

  1. 请访问https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/where-weoperate。目前联合国维和行动有哪些?
  2. Go to https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/where-weoperate. What are the current UN peacekeeping operations?
  3. 红十字国际委员会的使命宣言是什么?请访问其网站:www.icrc.org
  4. What is the mission statement of the International Committee of the Red Cross? Consult its website, www.icrc.org.
  5. 据联合国战争对儿童影响问题专家格拉萨·马谢尔 (Graça Machel) 介绍(见www.unicef.org/graca/),为什么儿童特别容易受到地雷的伤害?
  6. According to Graça Machel, the UN expert on the impact of war on children (see www.unicef.org/graca/), why are children particularly vulnerable to land mines?
  7. 请访问联合国网站www.un.org/en/about-un/index.html。现任秘书长是谁?他何时就任?
  8. Go to the UN website www.un.org/en/about-un/index.html. Who is the current Secretary-General, and when did he take office?
  9. 通过国际和平局网站http://www.ipb.org/,了解肖恩·麦克布莱德和平奖是什么?
  10. Using the International Peace Bureau site, http://www.ipb.org/, what is the Sean MacBride Peace Prize?

进一步研究

For Further Study

值得探索的书籍

Books to Explore

  • 艾利森,格雷厄姆,《注定一战:美国和中国能否逃脱修昔底德陷阱》纽约:霍顿·米夫林·哈考特出版社,2017 年。
  • Allison, Graham, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap, New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.
  • 联合国基本概况,纽约:联合国出版物[定期更新]。
  • Basic Facts About the United Nations, New York: United Nations Publications [Updated regularly].
  • 卡特,吉米,《巴勒斯坦:和平而非种族隔离》,纽约:西蒙与舒斯特出版社,2006 年。
  • Carter, Jimmy, Palestine: Peace not Apartheid, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.
  • 蔡美儿,艾米,《政治部落:群体本能与国家命运》,纽约:企鹅出版社,2018 年。
  • Chua, Amy, Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations, New York: Penguin Press, 2018.
  • 哈斯,理查德,《混乱的世界:美国外交政策与旧秩序的危机》纽约:企鹅兰登书屋,2017 年。
  • Haass, Richard, The World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order, New York: Penguin Random House, 2017.
  • 哈桑·迈 (Hassan, Mai),《政权 政策国家解决方案:肯尼亚的官僚忠诚度与嵌入性》,纽约:剑桥大学出版社,2020 年。
  • Hassan, Mai, Regime Tltreats and State Solutions: Bureaucratic Loyalty and Embeddedness in Kenya, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020.
  • Hemon, Aleksandar 和 Peter van Agtmael,《玻璃墙背后:联合国内部》,纽约:MCD,2017 年。
  • Hemon, Aleksandar, and Peter van Agtmael, Behind the Glass Wall: Inside the United Nations, New York: MCD, 2017.
  • 肯尼迪,保罗,《人类的议会:联合国的过去、现在和未来》,纽约:兰登书屋,2006 年。
  • Kennedy, Paul, The Parliament of Man: Tlte Past, Present, and Future of the United Nations, New York: Random House, 2006.
  • 哈立迪·拉希德 (Khalidi, Rashid),《巴勒斯坦百年战争:1917-2017 年殖民主义和抵抗的历史》,第一版,纽约:大都会图书,亨利·霍尔特公司,2020 年。
  • Khalidi, Rashid, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017, First edition, New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2020.
  • 基辛格,亨利,《世界秩序》伦敦:企鹅出版社,2014 年。
  • Kissinger, Henry, World Order, London: Penguin Press, 2014.
  • 迈斯勒,斯坦利,《联合国:历史》,纽约:格罗夫出版社,2011 年。
  • Meisler, Stanley, United Nations: A History, New York: Grove Press, 2011.
  • Schake, Kori,《安全通道:从英国霸权到美国霸权的转变》 马萨诸塞州剑桥:哈佛大学出版社,2017 年。
  • Schake, Kori, Safe Passage: Vie Transition from British to American Hegemony, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017.

值得探索的网站

Internet Sites to Explore

指数

Index

注:图中的信息以斜体页码表示;表格中的信息以粗体页码表示。

Note: Information in figures indicated by page numbers in italics; information in tables is indicated by page numbers in bold.

  • 堪萨斯 33
  • Kansas 33
  • 卡玛 208
  • karma 208
  • 凯,约翰 57
  • Kay, John 57
  • 肯尼迪,约翰·F·肯尼迪 368 , 416-417
  • Kennedy, John F. 368, 416-417
  • 键盘 101
  • keyboard 101
  • 凯恩斯,约翰·梅纳德 314
  • Keynes, John Maynard 314
  • 凯恩斯主义观点 340
  • Keynesian view 340
  • 卡舒吉,贾马尔 286-287
  • Khashoggi, Jamal 286-287
  • 金正恩 406,418
  • Kim Jong-un 406, 418
  • 知识:历史 7科学 2-3
  • Jcnowledge: history of 7; scientific 2-3
  • 库恩,托马斯 11
  • Kuhn, Thomas 11
  • 京都议定书 91
  • Kyoto Protocol 91